What Love Means
by snapesgirl21
Summary: Re-Released! Sequel to A Matter of Perspective. Two years into their marriage, Ranger and Stephanie make the decision to start a family. But the path to parenthood takes unexpected turns along the way. Completed.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This is a sequel to my story "A Matter of Perspective", so if you haven't read that, I HIGHLY recommend you read it first so this story will have better meaning. It was originally written and posted in 2015. Some Takedown Twenty stuff is put into this story, but not much. This begins two years after the epilogue of Perspective (and four years since the beginning of that story) and is from Ranger's POV._

" _ **My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me." ~Winston Churchill**_

Gatherings with my family always fell into the category of _controlled chaos_ , and my sister Silvia's wedding rehearsal wasn't going to be an exception. In the little over two years since my own wedding, three more children had been born into the family, and with Silvia's marriage we would be adding another in-law plus his two young children. I wasn't sure how we were going to manage holidays at this point. We'd barely been able to fit into my parents' house at Christmas, and that was without Silvia, her fiancé Caleb, and his two kids, Miles and Josie, who had gone to Caleb's parents' house for the holiday.

The younger kids were running around the banquet room chasing each other like maniacs while my sisters all took turns to yell at their respective children to stop. My brother Emilio was trying to wrangle his three year-old twins into their jackets while his wife Lucy strapped their newborn daughter into her car seat. The rest of the adults were seated around a large, circular table in the center of the room. My sister Aurelia's daughter, Vivienne, was sitting in Stephanie's lap, sharing a piece of cake with her.

"How are you liking your new job, Stephanie?" my mother asked, finally able to sit down and relax after a day of errands and ordering people around.

"It's going well. Not exactly what I'd imagined doing with my life, but it's a good job," Stephanie replied, forking a piece of cake into Vivienne's mouth. "The fact that I'm married to the boss helps with the whole job security thing."

Vincent Plum Bail Bonds had received an overhaul six months earlier when Harry the Hammer, Vinnie's father-in-law and financial backer, died from a massive heart attack. Being divorced, he'd left everything to his only daughter, Lucille, who now owned her husband more than ever. Connie had quit a few weeks before Harry died in order to stay home with her daughter, leaving Lula to cover the desk while Vinnie had interviewed a slew of _applicants_ that he'd found on the various corners along Stark Street. The interviews ended as soon as Harry's will was read, and Lula had been fired the same day so that Lucille herself could manage the office and keep an eye on her perverted, philandering husband. Desperate to get away from his wife, Vinnie had informed Stephanie that she was costing him too much money and that he was going to go back to bringing in his own skips so that he didn't have to pay her to do it. Stephanie had been upset, but had taken it as a sign that she needed to go in a different direction and had been surprisingly enthusiastic as she took to the internet to search for jobs.

The enthusiasm had quickly died when her two-point-one grade-point-average in sociology and nearly eight years' experience in chasing after morons who had skipped out on bail failed to impress potential employers. I'd offered her a position in my company, which she'd declined, but after four months without a job she caved, saying she'd take whatever I could give her. She needed to work again, not for money but for her sanity. Along with my own.

I'd opened a branch of Rangeman in Newark nearly a year ago and business had grown faster than any of the projections had predicted, so Tank and I had agreed that he should head up that office and make sure it continued to provide the quality of service I expected. As a result, he and Lula decided to leave Trenton and moved to Newark to live in the apartment that I would typically occupy in the Rangeman building. It hadn't been easy to make the decision to give the Newark reins over to Tank. Not that I didn't trust him to run the office as well as I did, but because it meant he wouldn't be there to watch my back every day. Not only did he _literally_ watch my back, he also managed the more minor details of my office. He made up the schedules every month, read all shift reports and brought anything of issue to my attention, managed my calendar and helped keep me on schedule, all on top of taking the occasional monitoring shift. He was also a good judge of character whenever I was interviewing prospective employees and would give me his feedback during the deliberation process. And beyond all of that, he was my best friend after Stephanie. I'd known I needed someone like that in my office, and that Stephanie would be a good replacement.

The men in my building had known better than to make any sort of comment about my wife working for me, so the transition into the job had been relatively easy for her. In all the years I'd known her, I'd discovered that Stephanie was surprising efficient in more structured settings. She had picked up the technological aspect quickly and had even made a few suggested changes that I'd agreed with and implemented immediately. The only problem had been the men who had attempted to take advantage of their acquaintance with Stephanie in the past and request certain schedules. The day I'd found her stressing over schedules in her office was the last day anything like that had happened.

"My only complaint is that she's constantly accusing me of sexual harassment," I said, flashing her a smile when she rolled her eyes.

"That's because you constantly sexually harass me at the office."

"Well, you are my wife, and you already said sleeping with the boss helps with your job security."

My brother-in-law Andres chuckled. "I don't know how you manage to work together _and_ stay married. Celia would kill me if we had to be around each other that much."

I put an arm across the back of Stephanie's chair. "We did the work thing first, so we're used to it."

"Seriously, Carlos, leave the poor woman alone," my mother said wearily. "You can _harass_ her in the privacy of your own home."

"Oh I do," I said. "Every chance I get." My mother threw a cloth napkin across the table at me and shook her head.

"It gets better," Stephanie said. "After I've informed him that what he's doing is sexual harassment and that he needs to be a good example for his men, he starts calls me 'Mrs. Manoso' whenever we're working and informs me any time that we are alone in an office that I have the right to ask someone else to be present should I feel uncomfortable."

All of the men laughed and the women gave me looks of disapproval.

"You are such a smartass," Celia informed me, taking a seat next to her husband. "Honestly, how Stephanie puts up with you. . . the woman is surely in line for sainthood."

"Not to sound like a snob, but it's weird to not be staying in the big apartment," Stephanie commented two hours later as we undressed in one of the staff apartments at the Newark office. "It was a big part of the reason I married you."

The alarm on Stephanie's phone dinged, which was her signal to take her birth control pill for the day. She swiped it off and continued to undress.

"And here I thought it was for the sex," I replied as I stretched out naked on the bed. "Are we headed for divorce?"

"You bet," she replied, straddling my lap wearing only her bra and underwear. "And since you were the sap who said we didn't need a pre-nupital agreement, I plan to take you to the cleaners."

I kissed her and pulled her down against me. "Love makes people stupid. I'll learn my lesson with my next wife."

I reached around to unhook her bra, but she grabbed my arm. "Can we talk for a minute?"

"You can't talk while you're naked?"

"You won't be paying attention if I'm naked."

"You're straddling me in your bra and underwear. That's a little more than distracting," I told her, holding her in place when she went to move. "But I can control myself. Talk."

She took a deep breath in and blew it out. "I think I'm ready to have a baby."

I was still for a moment, trying not to let the shock show. I'd always told Stephanie that I'd be open to having children with her, but that it would be her call. I could be just as happy without children, which I'd expected would be the case given Stephanie's panic anytime the subject had been brought up in the past.

"Are you really freaked out by the idea?" she asked me. "I know we've only been married for two years, but I think I feel ready. Scared as hell, but ready. And I know I don't have a lot of years left to have a baby, so I think it should be sooner rather than later."

"I've always left the decision up to you, Stephanie," I said when I found my voice. "If you want a baby, we'll have one."

"But do _you_ want one?"

I didn't want to tell her that I wasn't entirely sure. "We'll never regret having a baby, but I think you would regret _not_ having one." I knew that much was true.

Stephanie planted a kiss on my lips. "You're right. I know it can take a few months to get pregnant after going off the Pill, so do you think we should start trying now or do you want to wait a few more months?"

I slipped my hand around her back and unclasped her bra. "No time like the present."

I woke up around three in the morning, having had a restless night of sleep. Stephanie was sound asleep next to me, exhausted from two rounds of vigorous sex that we'd joked were the last of our _practice rounds_. I quietly dressed and went down to the gym to workout, opting for a run on the treadmill so that I could let my thoughts wander. I had to get myself together over the whole baby thing before Stephanie ended up pregnant. I didn't want her to tell me she was pregnant while I still felt so hesitant about the whole ordeal. I could have told her I wasn't sure I was ready, but it would have hurt her. She would have understood, but then I would have carried around the guilt of knowing my wife wanted to have a baby, but wasn't because I didn't want it.

When I'd joined the Army, my first priority in life had been to be a good soldier. I wanted to follow orders, work my way up the ranks, protect my brothers, and succeed in missions. After leaving the Army, my priority had been on being a businessman. A _successful_ businessman. Then sole owner of my business. It was only after Stephanie and I began having an actual relationship that my priorities shifted. Now my first priority in life was to be a good husband. I wanted to have a wife who knew how much I loved her, who felt secure in both our relationship and physical safety. I wanted a wife who was happy with our marriage and didn't have to want for anything. Not being able to provide even one of those things to her made me feel like a failure as a husband, and feeling like a failure in that made everything else feel like shit as well. I could lose my business, all my money, the cars, the properties, but as long as I had Stephanie, and she was happy and safe, I could survive anything.

"Do you think we should tell our family that we are going to try to get pregnant, or just wait and surprise them?" Stephanie asked as we drove to the wedding venue the next afternoon.

"Wait. We get enough pressure as it is. Imagine if they knew we weren't trying to prevent it any longer."

I could practically hear Edna recommending positions for us to try to get pregnant, possibly telling us about her own history in attempting to conceive. I'd have to kill myself after that, then Stephanie wouldn't get the baby she wanted.

"Good point. I've always heard that you should wait until the first trimester is over to really tell anyone because a miscarriage is most likely to happen during the first three months, so that means it would be a while before we have to tell anyone," she replied, looking relieved. "That's good. I dread telling Lula."

I could understand why. Despite being told that the chances were very low, Tank and Lula had been trying to get pregnant since they got married with no success. They had given up hope of having their own child and had moved towards the adoption field several months ago. The problem was that no adoption agency wanted to take a chance on a man in a dangerous job and a woman who used to be a prostitute. Tank, not usually one to open up about his personal problems, had confided in me recently that the entire process was taking a toll on their relationship. He wasn't sure how much more he could take before telling Lula he was ready to give up, and he wasn't sure what the aftermath of such a statement would be. When Connie had announced her pregnancy to everyone shortly after Stephanie and I got married, Lula had been happy for her, though she'd initially lost her shit over the fact that Connie could get accidentally get pregnant so easily.

The wedding went off without any problems and the reception lasted well into the evening. Stephanie kept telling me I should practice holding Emilio's new daughter Mia, since she was only a month old and still a relative newborn. I reminded her that I'd not only been holding my nieces and nephews since the first one had been born nearly eighteen years before, but that I still remembered what it had been like to hold Julie when she was a baby. I ended up holding Mia twice during the reception, not letting myself think too much about what my own child with Stephanie might look like. I didn't want to think too much about having a baby at this point.

 _There will be plenty of time to get over this,_ I told myself.


	2. Chapter 2

" _ **The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love." ~Jean de la Bruyere**_

 _Five weeks later…_

"I think I might be pregnant," Stephanie said one morning as we both stood in the bathroom getting ready for work.

"I thought you said it would probably take a few months," I replied, the shock of her statement hitting harder than I would have anticipated. I could hear my heart pounding my ears and took a moment to steady myself so that she didn't see my hands shake as a I reached for my toothbrush.

"I thought it might, but I'm already ten days late, and then I remembered that Mary Lou got pregnant with her youngest while she was on the Pill after just missing a couple of doses, so maybe it doesn't always take that long."

She reached into a drawer in the bathroom and pulled out a box. "I bought tests right after we decided to start trying, but I didn't want to take one right away because I didn't want to get my hopes up. It might be my body is just trying to adjust to being off the Pill."

I put all of my focus into brushing my teeth to buy myself a few seconds to process everything.

"Take it, then you'll know," I said once I'd rinsed my mouth. "You'll be distracted all day if you don't."

She wasn't the only one.

I left the bathroom and went into our bedroom to get dressed, giving myself a moment to close my eyes and do some deep breathing in private. The idea of Stephanie being pregnant this soon was disconcerting. I hadn't been letting myself think too much about the fact that we were purposely trying to get pregnant because I still wasn't excited about the idea, but wondered if I really needed to be. Maybe excitement wasn't necessary. Had I been _excited_ to move in with Stephanie? To ask her to marry me? To actually marry her?

Yes, I had been. The best moment of my life up to that point had been marrying her. I hadn't let it show, but internally I'd been a grinning idiot since we'd made the decision to get married on New Year's Eve in Newark. I loved being married to her. We were happy and content, our lives settled and relatively calm. _I_ was settled.

And that was what I was afraid would change with a baby.

I'd seen the stress of wanting a child weigh on Emilio and Lucy as they'd suffered numerous miscarriages before having the twins, and now I was seeing it happen to Tank and Lula in their efforts to adopt. Even if we didn't experience problems getting pregnant, I wondered how our relationship would change when it was no longer just the two of us. When we were distracted by feedings and diaper changes, which would morph into preschool and play dates, then dating and driving and college choices. By the time it was back to being just the two of us, we'd be at least two decades older and possibly very different people. Would we be the same people we always were, or so different that we didn't recognize each other without children around filtering our perspective?

"The box says it may take two minutes for the results to show up," Stephanie announced as she came back into the room, startling me out of my thoughts. She was holding the test in her hand and laid it face down on the dresser. "I'll get dressed and then we can look at it together."

I watched her hands tremble slightly as she chose a black shirt and skirt from the closet. She was nervous. Maybe my ambivalence wasn't so bad. Maybe it was just part of the normal process. When Rachel had called to tell me that she was pregnant with Julie, I'd felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. But considering the circumstances, I'd considered that a normal reaction. No one expected a one-night stand to call up and say she was having your child.

"Do you think it's been more than two minutes?" Stephanie asked once she'd pulled on her clothes.

"Probably closer to five," I said, sitting down on the bed to pull on my shoes. "I'm sure it's ready."

Stephanie grabbed the test and sat down next to me. "Okay, here we go. It'll say _Pregnant_ or _Not Pregnant_."

Straightforward. I liked that.

She flipped the stick over and sucked in some air as she read the word _Pregnant_ on the little display. I felt my pulse quicken, though I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"I'm pregnant," Stephanie said breathlessly. "We're going to have a baby."

Mechanically, I wrapped an arm around her and kissed her above the ear. "Yes, we are."

I could see that under her own mild shock was joy mixed with terror. This was what she'd wanted, even if it scared the shit out of her.

"Oh my God. I just can't believe it happened so fast," she said, still staring down at the little stick.

"We're that just good," I said, making her chuckle.

"I guess so."

A chime on my phone reminded me that I had a meeting in thirty minutes and ended the intimate moment. Normally I hated any disruption when I was with Stephanie, but I was thankful for this one.

"I guess that means it's time for us to go earn money so we can support this kid."

Stephanie put the stick in the drawer of her nightstand. "Yes, because we're so obviously broke."

I gave her a playful smack on the ass as we left the bedroom. I'd noticed in the last year or so that Stephanie had finally gotten more comfortable with the idea that my wealth was also hers. She still didn't shop extravagantly or buy things that cost more than a couple hundred dollars without running it by me, but she'd finally started using the credit cards I'd had furnished for her along with using our joint bank account instead of her own.

We were silent on our way to the office, both of us lost in our own thoughts. We usually drove to work together since Stephanie was now my new Tank. She generally went with me to accounts and client meetings unless there was a specific reason for her to not be there. I began sorting my thoughts, thinking about whether there were any aspects of the job that I needed to assign to someone else during her pregnancy. Not having had any female employees except a woman past child-bearing years meant that I hadn't put much thought into having to adjust a job for a pregnant woman, especially one that was carrying my child. Keeping myself focused on pragmatics helped to keep the emotional stuff at bay, giving me an excuse to not dwell.

"I'm pulling you from patrols," I told her as we pulled into the garage. "I can get someone else to go with me if I have to cover them."

"Ranger—," Stephanie said, her tone defensive, but I held up a hand.

"That's not negotiable. As both your boss and your husband, I'm telling you it's not safe to have you potentially running into a dangerous situation. Other than that, I don't think there will need to be any other changes to your job."

I knew I was on the business end of a dirty look, but I didn't care. She wanted this baby, so she was going to have to accept the things that went along with that, even if she didn't like them.

"I don't see why I can't keep going on patrol until I'm further along," she said, slamming the door as we climbed out of the Cayenne. "It's not like I can't run right now. I probably still have a few months until I start showing. Even the police let pregnant officers stay on duty until they feel they need to switch to something lighter."

I blocked her path at the back of the car. "You being able to run isn't what concerns me. And you don't work for the police department. You work for me. What if you're kicked in the abdomen or pushed down a flight of stairs? Or shot while wearing a vest? It may not kill you, but it's still a serious impact. Are you willing to risk losing this baby?"

"Of course not," Stephanie said, deflating a little. "But I knew you'd do this. I knew you'd get even more overprotective than you already are."

"Deal with it."

I could practically feel the eye roll and middle finger she was giving me as we walked towards the elevator. I now had another element involved in my responsibility to Stephanie as her husband. I now had to help protect her pregnancy as much as I could. The standards I set for her physical safety had to be adjusted. Not that I thought of her as fragile, but the life she was trying to make inside her body was, and it was important to her.

 _And you,_ I reminded myself. That life was going to be important to me as well. It was important to me right now because it was tied into her health and happiness, but I wanted—and needed— it be important to me because of what it represented. I n less than a year, that life would be born. It would be my child, looking to me to keep it safe and meet all of its needs. Not just physical and financial, but emotional.

I knew how to pay child support. I knew how to track down my child if it was kidnapped. I knew what the child needed, but I hadn't been there to provide all of that up to this point. I'd let another man do that for me. Basically, I was fucked.

The remainder of the day was uneventful, though I knew Stephanie and I were both distracted. She was likely wrapped up in thoughts of what was to come in her pregnancy, the physical aspect as well as the social. I doubted that anyone in the office would dare make a disparaging remark unless they were suicidal, but I knew that some of them would be thinking them. They'd be wondering what kind of liability she would be when she was in the later stages of pregnancy or if she began suffering from morning sickness. They'd dread, or even expect, horrific mood swings and avoid her. I was lost in my own uncertainty and control issues. I knew Stephanie would want to be safe, but sometimes her judgment wasn't the best. Even since she'd left bond enforcement she had managed to lose a car while visiting Lula in Newark. The increased desire to protect her felt like a contrast with my uncertainties about having a baby.

What kind of father was I going to be? My involvement with Julie had been too limited for me to be able to use that as a gauge. I knew what my own father had been like, but we had different personalities and different situations. I had no intentions of having a household full of children who would be left to be primarily cared for by my wife. If I was going to intentionally bring a life into the world, then I was going to accept more than just financial and moral responsibility for that life. Stephanie had told me after our decision to get pregnant that she intended to continue working after any children were born because she wasn't stay-at-home mother material. We'd either have her mother babysit or hire a nanny. We'd even talked about having a nanny stay with the baby up on the seventh floor during the day so that we would be close and we would have more access than if they stayed at our house. We'd also discussed whether or not buy a new house, but that conversation had been tabled until she was actually pregnant. Which was now.

I felt a headache coming on, the result of my brain working even more than it usually did. There was still more to figure out, but I told myself to ease up and let time help. My control issues were threatening to go into overdrive, and would undoubtedly cause a fight with Stephanie if I didn't keep them in check.

"We're supposed to be having dinner with my parents tonight," Stephanie reminded me as five rolled around. "We need to run home and let Bob out on the way."

Every marriage has certain situations that require a significant amount of patience and compromise to ensure that the marriage stays together. Dinners with the Plums fell into that category for me. Frank was the only person I actually enjoyed seeing, mainly because he kept to himself and usually shared my feelings on the various topics of conversation or ridiculous happenings that occurred whenever we were together. He'd also showed me his stash of Cuban cigars and had invited me to join him occasionally after dinner. I'd been sure to keep him in stock. I tolerated Helen, who badgered us at least once a month about giving her grandchildren, and Edna simply made me uncomfortable. It wasn't just the fact that she continued to try to grab my ass every chance she got, but hearing about her sex life and other inappropriate questions had gone from mildly amusing to annoying and occasionally embarrassing. Frank had once asked me how to kill her and make it look like natural causes, but I'd refused to answer him. I'd killed enough people in my life who had deserved it. I wasn't going to have the death of a woman that was my grandmother by marriage and whose greatest sin was being inappropriate on my conscious.

As we walked into the Plums' house I knew we were in for a long evening. The minute the smell of the pot roast hit us, Stephanie turned green.

"Oh God," she whispered, covering her mouth. "The smell of the pot roast is going to make me sick."

"See if you can find anything to rub under your nose to help with the smell," I told her. "Look for some chest rub or something similar."

Stephanie ran upstairs to the bathroom while I sat in the living room with her father, who was watching the news. We were all summoned to the dining room a few minutes later and ate while Edna filled us in on the Burg gossip. I could smell the menthol wafting from Stephanie, but I could tell it was helping her get through the meal. She apparently couldn't handle eating the pot roast either, as I would see her cut small pieces off and slip them into her napkin when no one was looking.

"Did you hear that Evelyn Kruzic's daughter Missy is pregnant?" Edna asked Helen as dessert was served.

"No!" Helen replied, looking scandalized. "She's only seventeen! And she's heading to Harvard in the fall."

"Yep, and that's why she putting the baby up for adoption," Edna said. "But she's wanting to do an open adoption, where she can still be in contact with the adoptive family, see pictures of the baby and even visit sometimes. Evelyn isn't happy about it. She wants her to just give up the baby and pretend it never happened. I guess Missy had gone to a party back in the fall, got drunk and ended up sleeping with several different boys that night so she doesn't know who the father is. They've kept it real quiet until now."

Frank muttered something unintelligible under his breath and Helen made the sign of the cross.

"Is she looking for someone in Trenton, or do they just need to live close enough to visit in one day?" Stephanie asked.

"You're not thinking of adopting, are you?" Helen asked, her expression making it very clear that her idea of adding grandchildren to the family did not include adopting the children of unwed teenagers.

"No, I mean for Lula and Tank,' she replied, looking at me. "They've been wanting to adopt, but keep getting turned down by agencies. They live up in Newark now, but it'd still be close enough to visit."

"You should call them," Edna said. "I know they've been trying to keep this quiet, but it's getting harder now that Missy's showing. They don't want Harvard getting wind of it because they're afraid they'll change their minds and won't let her in."

"I'll talk to Lula and Tank first, and if they are interested, I'll call the Kruzics," Stephanie said, looking down at her dessert. She was starting to look nauseous again. "I'm going to take my dessert home. I'm pretty full, and we need to get home to let Bob out."

Once we were out the door, Stephanie hurried off the porch and threw up in the bushes in front of the house.

"No beef until further notice," she said as she wiped her mouth with a tissue from her purse. "I hope that doesn't happen with anything else. Like donuts or cake."

I wrapped an arm around her waist. "You'd be better off to not eat that stuff. Our kid is going to born with a sugar addiction."

It felt weird to say that, referring to the minute being that was growing inside Stephanie. It had been over twelve hours since the test result and I was still in a bit of shock over it. I didn't regret it, but I still wasn't excited. And hardest of all was keeping that from Stephanie. In our years together, I'd worked on being more expressive with her, opening to her more than I'd ever opened up to anyone. If I withdrew too much, she'd know something was wrong, but I also couldn't bring myself to admit the truth to her. As far she knew, I was excited to be having a baby. It would hurt her to know otherwise. Hopefully I could really get excited before she discovered the truth.

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing with this adoption thing?" Stephanie asked. "I don't want to overstep, but I know how much Lula wants a baby."

"I don't think it's overstepping," I told her as I pulled into our neighborhood. "It also has the added bonus of taking some of the heat off of you when you tell her you're pregnant if she's going to be getting a baby of her own."

She bit her lip, a sheepish smile forming. "Yeah, I'd thought of that too. This is why we're so good together. We're usually on the same wavelength."

 _Usually._


	3. Chapter 3

_**Love is always a leap into the unknown. You can try to control as many variables, and understand a situation as you can, but you're still jumping off a cliff and hoping that someone catches you.**_ **~Lisa Kleypas**

Life kept us busy for the next several weeks, buying me more time to figure out my feelings on Stephanie's pregnancy. She'd gone to her gynecologist for what was called a prenatal intake appointment where they did a pregnancy test of their own, educated her on what she should and shouldn't be doing during pregnancy, and provided her with books to read and prenatal vitamins that looked like they could choke a horse. They'd also predicted her due date as December fourth. She would have her first regular appointment at the end of May, complete with sonogram and gynecological exam. I'd promised I would come to the sonogram, but would skip the exam. As much as I loved that part of Stephanie's body, I doubted there would be anything sexy about the ordeal.

Stephanie sat up reading _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ every night before bed, simultaneously fascinated and horrified by what goes on during pregnancy. Her morning sickness had continued to bother her anytime she was around beef or seafood, limiting what we could eat, and I'd seen her hurry out of the dining room at work more than once when Ella had made tuna salad sandwiches for lunch. She was also experiencing severe exhaustion, often falling asleep at her desk during the day or on the couch as soon as we got home from work. Our sex life was another casualty of her pregnancy, though she'd told me that the second trimester was rumored to bring about a tremendous sex drive to make up for it.

Lula and Tank had met with Missy Kruzic and her family in April, and by the beginning of May, Tank was informing me that Missy had said she wanted them to be the parents for her baby boy, which was due to be born in early July. They'd had set out to look for a house, knowing that the one-bedroom apartment at Rangeman would be too small for them as the baby aged. The strain on their marriage that had once been related to not having any options for children was now replaced by disagreements over a name, though Tank said that battle was far less likely to end his marriage.

"Another woman was found dead in a dumpster," Stephanie told me one evening as she watched the news. "Melvina Gillian. I don't know her." The name caught my attention.

"Her son is a Rangeman client," I said, walking over to hear the story. "Between the Newark and Trenton offices, we monitor his twelve business accounts, plus his home and the homes of his three children."

The news anchor said this was the third such murder in the last eighteen months in the Trenton area, but that no suspects had been identified. I looked over to see that Stephanie had a tear rolling down her cheek. She'd become more emotional since getting pregnant. It wasn't uncommon to see her cry over commercials these days.

"You okay?" I asked, putting an arm around her. She nodded.

"I just hate to think of someone killing old women like that. It makes me think of my grandmother, and if someone did that to her."

I could understand the sentiment. I turned off the news and took her upstairs, promising to take her mind off of old ladies and murderers. All I managed to do was to put her to sleep before I'd even gotten my dick inside her. Not a problem I'd had at any other time in my life.

"At ten weeks, your baby is the size of a kumquat and weighs less than a quarter of an ounce," Stephanie read from the pregnancy website she'd joined. "That's a little over an inch long. Last week it was a grape."

She plucked a grape from my plate and examined it. "Our baby is just a little bit bigger than this." She stood up and held the grape against her lower abdomen. "So something a little bigger than this is floating around my uterus."

Unless you knew her body as well as I did, you wouldn't have noticed the slight fullness in her lower abdomen, which was more evident when I had my hands on her. Her breasts had also gotten bigger, moving up a full cup size in the five weeks since she'd discovered she was pregnant. Unfortunately for me, they were so sore that she couldn't bear for me to touch them. I hoped that was something else that would subside in the second trimester.

"Something the size of a kumquat is zapping you of your energy, eliminating beef, seafood, and caffeine from your diet, and is depriving us of our sex life," I observed, earning an eye roll from Stephanie. "That little kumquat has a lot of power."

"I told you that stuff will get better in a few weeks. Granted, that's when I start getting fat, so I guess I can't win at everything," Stephanie replied, finishing the last of her milk.

I let my mind wander for a minute while I watched her load the dishwasher, trying to imagine what her body would look like over the next few months. It was with a small jolt that I realized I was actually looking forward to seeing her belly grow as our child grew inside of her, thinking that she'd look sexier than ever. Over the past week, I'd found myself thinking about what life would be like after the baby was born, and not just about the possible negative changes, but about the potential good ones. Stephanie turned around and caught me staring at her.

"What?" she asked.

"I forgot to mention that Rupert Gillian called me this morning," I said as a change of subject.

"When did he call you? It's barely seven."

"About five-thirty."

"Geez, are you both part of the early risers club?"

"Yes, the Trenton chapter of the ERC meets the third Tuesday of every month at IHOP," I said. "It's hard to find anything open at five in the morning."

"Smartass. What did he want?"

"For my help looking into his mother's death," I replied. "The police are on it, but he asked as a favor that I look at it from the angle of someone who isn't bogged down with all of the legal red tape."

It had been ten days since Melvina Gillian had been found in a dumpster, but the police were still just as lost as they'd been with the other two women. I'd started some preliminary searches that morning based on the information Rupert had given me, and nothing had stood out.

"Her viewing is this evening. I need you to go with me. There will be a lot of people from the Burg there, and you're from the Burg. You'll know them and be more likely to get information out of them than I would."

Stephanie narrowed her eyes at me. "You married Burg, so you're Burg-in-law. People would talk to you. You just don't want to have to do the talking. You'd rather I do it."

"You know me so well. Do you feel up to going?"

Stephanie sighed. "Of course I'll go with you and do the talking because that's the skill set I bring to this marriage. You bring everything else."

I pulled her in for a kiss. "Thanks, babe. I've got some more information I'll have you look into today before we go to the viewing tonight. You can contact Rupert directly if you have any questions about his mother or her habits or friends. I told him I was going to have you help me."

"Do you think it's someone from the Burg doing this?" she asked, looking uneasy. "I know we have a lot of old Mob guys hanging around, but these women don't look like they'd be messed up with the Mob. They looked like they should be gossiping at the salon with Grandma Mazur."

"That's what doesn't make sense. I want you to look into the backgrounds of the other women who were murdered and start looking for connections between them. People, habits, places."

I left Stephanie to work on the investigation while I was busy meeting with new and current clients for most of the day. The opening of the office in Newark had helped to boost our sales in Trenton as well. Businesses in New York with offices in the Trenton area were utilizing my company for their security needs. Opening the Newark office had been one of the best business decisions I'd ever made.

"Which dress do you think I should wear tonight?" Stephanie asked, holding up two black dresses. "This one," she indicated the one in her right hand. "is more conservative and more funeral-appropriate, but the other is sexier and something you'd enjoy more. And this is probably the last time I'll be able to wear the sexy one for a long time."

"Wear whatever is comfortable," I told her. "It doesn't matter what you're wearing, you're going to look better than everyone else there."

I bit my lip as I watched Stephanie struggle with the zipper on her sexy dress. The dress had tight before she'd gotten pregnant and I had a feeling it might not fit her changing body.

"Oh crap," Stephanie said a few minutes later. "I can't get it zipped all the way."

I went over to her, pushing her hair aside to work on the zipper. It strained as I forced it up.

"I think your breasts are too big," I said. "Can you do anything about them?"

"There's something I've never heard before," Stephanie said as she flattened her breasts against her chest and winced. I managed to get the zipper up to the top of the dress, though I questioned whether it would be able to stay or if Stephanie could breathe.

"Oh man," she moaned. "I don't know how long I can stay in this dress." She turned around to face me, her breasts almost bursting out of the neckline. The dress was short and tight, and highlighted the ever-so-slight fullness of her lower abdomen.

"Switch to the other one."

"No! We put all that effort into getting me into this one. Besides, what if I can't wear this ever again after I have the baby? I need this to be my last hurrah."

She stepped into her shoes and grabbed her purse off the dresser. "Let's go."

I did my best not to laugh as I watched her walk stiffly down the stairs, but as she took a seat in the Cayenne and the unmistakable sound of her zipper splitting rang out loudly, I doubled over in laughter.

"This isn't funny," Stephanie said briskly, jumping back out of the car and hurrying back up to the house. By the time I caught up to her, the dress was in a pool on the floor of the bedroom and she was stuffing herself into the other black dress, which didn't require any fasteners. It was snug, but she looked like she could breathe again.

"My last hurrah was too much for the dress," she said sadly, kicking the fabric aside.

"You're still sexy," I told her, placing a kiss on her neck. "And you'll have plenty more hurrahs. In fact, I plan on giving you one tonight."

We were at the viewing for two hours while Stephanie talked to people she knew, trying to get information on Melvina and the other murdered women. I'd developed a migraine from the smell of flowers and too much Chanel No. 5, which I'd been able to recognize because it was the perfume my mother had worn my entire life. I swore to myself that I'd never attend another Burg viewing unless it was for a member of Stephanie's family, and even then I would expect that it be a close family member. Nothing more distant than a first cousin. Stephanie told me about the bingo connection between the three murder victims as we drove home.

"Grandma told me at the viewing that Uncle Sunny asked her out," Stephanie said as we dressed for bed that night. "I told her I didn't think she should go out with him."

"Isn't he Morelli's uncle? The one that ran over a guy with his car and got caught because someone had caught it on video?"

"Yes, and he's FTA. Vinnie's been trying to find him for the last few days."

"I assume you aren't going to help him."

"Not a chance," she replied, climbing into bed. "I'm not going to help that perverted bastard do the job he took away from me. But I am going to follow Grandma and Sunny to their lunch date tomorrow. Something bothers me about it. Everyone knows what Sunny does, but he's so loved in the Burg that everyone looks the other way. I don't like the idea of my grandmother going out with a man who murders people out of revenge."

"You married me, and you know what I've done," I said quietly.

"That was different."

"How? I murdered a man who had kidnapped you. It was out of revenge as much as protection."

Stephanie snuggled into my chest. "Again, that was different. You didn't do it because he owed you money or crossed you in a business deal. And you've done it once. He's probably done it more times than he can even remember. And now there's someone out there murdering women who are in same the social circles as my grandmother. For all we know it could be Sunny."

"Do you really think Sunny is murdering old women and stuffing them in dumpsters?"

Stephanie shrugged. "I don't really think so, but I guess you can never know for sure. We never expected Constantine Stiva to turn out to be a maniac."

I had my suspicions as to what was really bothering her about Sunny dating her grandmother, but I wanted her to admit it.

"So then why do you need to follow her?"

She was quiet for a minute. "Because it's weird. He's Morelli's uncle, she's my grandmother, and Morelli and I used to date. It's uncomfortable."

And there it was. I hadn't seen or heard from Morelli in over three years, since the day he'd brought Bob to the house to live with us, and if Stephanie had had any contact with him, she hadn't told me about it. What I _had_ heard about him—courtesy of Edna— was that he'd gotten married to his girlfriend six months after Stephanie and I had gotten married, and that his wife had given birth to a baby boy two months later.

"Have you talked to Morelli lately?" I asked.

Stephanie shook her head. "No, not since he brought Bob to live with us. I would have told you if I had."

I stroked her hair while listening to the wheels turning in her head. "Stop worrying. You can't control who your grandmother dates, but if you want to follow her to lunch tomorrow, I'll go with you."

"You don't have to do that. You're busy, anyway. A meeting with Thomas Azark at noon, which is when they are going to lunch."

I'd made an effort. My husbandly obligation was complete.

"Where are they going?"

"The Blue Fish Grill over in Princeton."

A chuckle escaped me before I could stop it. "And you think you'll be able to stay seated without drawing attention to yourself for at least an hour when the smell of fish has you heaving uncontrollably?"

"I'm going to use the chest rub trick. It worked pretty well at my parents' house the last time we had pot roast."

"You might want to request a seat near the restrooms just to be safe."

Stephanie left at eleven the next day to get over to Princeton before Sunny and Edna to avoid being seen coming into the restaurant. At my advice, she'd taken a small listening device with her. She was going to bribe the host into seating Sunny and Edna at the table she bugged, allowing her to sit near the restrooms and be able to listen to the conversation. I had no doubt she'd spend half her time in the restroom vomiting, but she was determined and I knew I'd have no chance of changing her mind.

My meeting with Azark lasted more than two hours, but since it netted my company more than two million in contracts over the next year it was worth it. As I headed back to my office, I found a text on my cell phone from Stephanie. The time stamp said it had been sent less than an hour after the lunch was supposed to have started.

 **I broke up the lunch with Grandma and Sunny. I heard him trying talk her into emptying her savings account. They're both pissed, but Grandma left with me to come home. Didn't the three women who were killed in Trenton have their bank accounts emptied right before they were killed?**

They had. All three women had cleaned out their bank accounts the day before they'd been found in the dumpsters. My gut started churning, telling me that maybe Stephanie's outlandish concerns had been valid. If Sunny was the killer, it meant Stephanie had pissed him off by interrupting his plans.

 _ **I'll look into it. Where are you?**_

I waited three minutes for her response before bringing up the GPS tracker on her phone and car. The phone was moving south on Route 1, but Stephanie's car was parked in front of the bonds office. The lack of response coupled with the fact that Stephanie's phone and car weren't in the same place had me worried. I hurried down to my car, yelling at the control room to have the nearest patrol car start following the cell signal.

I attempted to call the phone, but was taken to voicemail after a few rings. If Sunny was the killer, and blamed Stephanie for robbing him of his next one, he might have decided to get back at her out of revenge. Her words from the night before about him killing people who crossed him sent a chill down my spine. I hoped I was just overreacting, praying that when I caught up to her that I'd find her in a taxi because she didn't want to be recognized in her Cayenne for whatever reason.

My phone buzzed and I answered through the hands-free system. "What do you know?"

"We're about a mile out," Hal said. "It looks like she's headed towards the Trenton-Morrisville Bridge."

The signal on Stephanie's phone stopped a few minutes later in the middle of the bridge.

Hal called back. "Traffic's backed up getting onto Bridge Street from Route 1. I think she must be stuck in the same traffic because her signal stopped moving."

"I'm coming up to the bridge from Route 29. I'll see if I can squeeze in from another angle and get closer to the signal," I told him.

The intersection was backed up as I tried to merge onto Bridge Street, so I drove up on the sidewalk towards the walkway that ran along the edge of the bridge. Looking ahead, I could see a car parked at the end of the walkway that ran alongside the bridge and there were several people grouped around the edge. I parked the Turbo behind the car and hurried towards the walkway. My adrenaline pumped and my heart skipped a beat when I saw that Stephanie was part of the group standing by the railing. She seemed to be fighting with the men, who looked like they were trying to push her over the rails and into the river.

"Stop!" I yelled, pulling my gun from the holster.

The men looked in my direction and several things happened at once. Two of the men succeeded in pushing Stephanie over the railing while the other two opened fire on me. I returned fire without hesitation, knowing that Stephanie wouldn't get hit by a stray bullet. I managed to hit both of the men who were shooting back and turned my gun on the two men who had shoved Stephanie off the bridge. They'd both been in the process of reaching for their guns as they went down. I ran to look over the railing and felt a wave of relief when I saw Stephanie dangling from the bridge, her ankle tied to a rope that was secured to a concrete block that had gotten stuck in the railing. Before I could say anything, the knot around her ankle loosened and Stephanie plummeted towards the Delaware River. I kept my eye on the spot where she disappeared as I leapt over the railing and followed her. The fall into the water was hard, but I immediately swam towards Stephanie, finding her a few feet in front of me. She was kicking her feet as hard as she could, her hands secured tightly behind her back with duct tape. I pushed her towards the surface, reaching fresh air a second after she did. She kept trying to talk, but shock and adrenaline interfered. I swam with the current, an arm wrapped around her waist and slowly made my way to the shoreline. I could hear sirens and saw several of my employees waiting along the shore, wading out into the shallow water as we reached a point where we could walk. They helped get Stephanie up on the embankment and cut the tape from her wrists.

"Are you okay?" I asked, wrapping her in blanket and pulling her into my arms. She nodded even though I could feel her trembling violently.

"H-h-how d-d-d-id y-you know s-s-something was wrong?" she asked, her teeth chattering.

"From your text and the fact that your phone and car signals were separated. I had a feeling that Sunny might want revenge."

She nodded again and buried her face into my neck. "Th-they w-w-worked for him. They were g-g-going to stun me, but I asked them not to. I told them I'd go wherever they wanted."

"Did they hurt you at all?" I asked as the shaking began to settle.

"No. They taped my hands up and stuck me in the trunk. They got me out and walked me along the bridge. I started to fight them when they tried to tie the block to my ankle, but I didn't get hurt."

Relieved that they hadn't kicked or stunned her, I pulled back to be able to look at her. "I still want you to be checked out."

"I'm fine, Ranger," she said, pulling the blanket more securely around her body. "I didn't get hurt."

"I know, but we'll both feel better if you're checked out and talk to the doctor. It's not just you in that body anymore."

It took Stephanie a minute to process what I was saying.

"Oh my God!" Stephanie said as a look of pure shock crossed her face. "I forgot. I forgot that I'm pregnant. How could I forget?"

"Because you were in a life-and-death situation, and you're coming out of a shock. There's nothing wrong with forgetting for a second," I said, kissing her forehead. "Why don't you see if you can get in with your doctor? If she can't see you, then I'll have someone drive you to the emergency room. I have to stay here and deal with the police."

I spent the next two-and-a-half hours answering questions with the police while they processed the crime scene. Stephanie had managed to get an appointment with her obstetrician almost immediately, a cancellation had left an appointment open half an hour after she called. She wouldn't have time to shower before she went, but I told Hal to stop somewhere so that she could pick up a change of clothes. No one wanted to walk around smelling like the Delaware River.

Two of the men were dead by the time the first responders had arrived and two had been transported to the hospitals in serious condition. The police took my statement, along with those of several witnesses, and asked me to walk them through the scene. I'd been told immediately that no one had any intentions of charging me with anything. People had thought a movie was being filmed on the bridges and had recorded the entire incident on their phones. We were currently trending on Twitter and Facebook.

I went to call Stephanie's phone as I drove away from the scene, but quickly realized that my phone was dead after going for a swim. Hal was waiting in the driveway at the house when I pulled up, honking once as he left. Someone had brought Stephanie's car back home, so I parked behind it and headed into the house.

"Babe?" I called out from the back door. No answer.

I kicked off my water-logged boots and walked through the house. It was quiet save for the sound of Bob's nails clacking on the hardwood floor. He hurried into the kitchen from the living room, barked at me several times, and ran back to where he'd come from.

I found Stephanie sitting on the couch hugging one of the pillows, Bob sitting beside her with his head resting on the arm of the couch. She was staring blankly at the coffee table, and tear tracks stained her cheeks. My stomach immediately clenched.

"What's wrong?" I asked, squatting down in front of her.

I had to fight the urge to shake her while I waited for her to pull herself out of her thoughts.

"There was no heartbeat," she whispered.

My blood went cold. "What?"

"There was no heartbeat when the doctor did the ultrasound," she said, tears slipping down her cheeks as she spoke.

My own heartbeat was pounding heavily against my chest as I registered what she was telling me.

"Was it from fall off the bridge?" I asked. "Or from being in shock?"

Stephanie shook her head absentmindedly. When she spoke, it felt like she was talking to herself more than me.

"She said it looks like the baby stopped growing a couple of weeks ago, but my body never completed the miscarriage. So if doesn't matter that I went willingly with kidnappers to avoid getting stunned, or that I got thrown off a bridge. I've been walking around, living my life, making plans for the past two weeks while our baby has been dead inside me."

With those last words, Stephanie began to cry in earnest. I sat down on the couch next to her and pulled her into my chest as she shook, the sound of her sobs cutting through me like a knife. I'd never heard such a sound come out of her. It was agony, devastation. And I was too stunned to say or do anything but hold her.

How had it happened? She'd done everything right. She didn't smoke, hadn't drank since we'd decided to try to get pregnant. She'd taken the prenatal vitamins, had avoided all of the foods that the books had said could cause problems, hadn't done any heavy lifting, and hadn't had any sort of fall or injury. I knew from Emilio's experiences that miscarriages early in the pregnancy were most often from genetic issues, which meant that no matter what Stephanie had done, she couldn't have prevented it.

Why had it happened? Was God punishing me for my uncertainty, for not knowing if I'd really wanted to have a baby? Was there something wrong with one of us? I'd produced a perfectly healthy child once by accident, but couldn't do so when I planned it? Had I been exposed to something in the intervening years that could cause a genetic problem in a child? Was there something wrong with Stephanie? Was it just something that happened, a one-time incident that we'd hopefully never have to face again, or were we facing more of this if we continued to try to for a baby?

Why the hell hadn't I gone with her? What kind of man sent his pregnant wife to get checked out after a life-threatening situation all by herself? I'd put my professional reputation first, wanting to get the situation cleared up to prevent any questions or misunderstandings from causing trouble for my business or my men. My first priority should have been going with her. The police could have taken my statement later. Instead, I'd stood around talking about the men who threw my wife off a bridge while she was learning that our baby had died.

The reality of our loss was staring me in the face. My wife's pain was my pain, and the knowledge that the baby we'd made wouldn't have a chance to be born dumbfounded me. I'd seen people die, had held them in my arms as they'd taken their last breaths. I'd been the one to end people's lives, and had even come close to dying myself, and I'd understood those things. I'd dealt with them. I didn't know how to deal with this. With the pain, with the questions, with the guilt.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: I know miscarriage is a sensitive subject, but one that should be talked about. Having been through one myself, I remember the hurt and the questions that went through my head during it all._

" _ **If love was a choice, who would choose such exquisite pain?"-Margaret Landon**_

I held Stephanie close and stroked her hair as the sun began to set outside. We were laying together on the couch after she'd cried to the point of exhaustion. I ran a finger across her abdomen, still finding it unfathomable that we wouldn't be having a baby in December. I closed my eyes and breathed in her scent only to pull away slightly when the smell of river water hit me. Everything felt off, and there was a lump in my throat threatening to escape. I forced myself to start meditating in order to clear my head. The overpowering guilt I was feeling was going to start clouding my objectivity, which I needed to be able to maintain for Stephanie.

I had nearly fallen asleep when I felt her begin to stir. I watched her eyes as she took a moment to figure out where she was and why she felt like shit. She looked up to see me watching her as dawning clicked in her eyes.

"What happened with the men who grabbed me?" she asked.

"I killed two, the other two were seriously injured and taken to the hospital. That was all I knew when I left the scene to come home," I told her. "My phone is water-logged, so if anyone has tried to call me it's just going to voicemail."

Stephanie sat up on the couch and rubbed at her temples. I could tell she was trying to numb herself to the pain, trying to move herself forward a little, at least for tonight. Stephanie's resilience had always astounded me, but she had never been through anything like this before, and I wondered if that resilience would wane.

"I have to be at St. Francis by six-thirty in the morning to check in for a procedure," Stephanie said. "The doctor thinks it's the best way for me to complete the miscarriage, both physically and emotionally."

I ran a hand down her back. "Will you have to stay in the hospital or is it outpatient?"

"Outpatient. She said I'll be under anesthesia, so I'll have recovery time before I can leave."

I reached over and held one of her hands. "You should try to eat something tonight. Otherwise you won't be able to eat again until tomorrow afternoon."

She looked ready to protest, but seemed to decide against it. "I need a shower first. I still smell like the river."

"Me too," I said. "Do you want me to make you anything while you're in the shower?"

She stood up, stretched, and shook her head. "I'll find something when I get done."

I watched as she went upstairs and intended to check on her if she wasn't out in twenty minutes. Stephanie had a habit of sitting in the shower and crying when she had a problem. I'd once waited for her for over an hour after she'd been in a fight and near-kidnapping, and I hadn't been sure of how long she'd been in the shower before I'd even arrived at her apartment.

I let ten minutes pass before I went upstairs and stood outside the bathroom, listening to the sounds of the running water and Stephanie's sobs. I walked in quietly and stripped, stepping into the shower behind her. She was sitting on the floor hugging her legs, her face buried in her knees. She turned around to face me and wiped her face.

"Sorry," she said, taking my hand to stand up. "Have I been in here long?"

"Ten minutes," I said. I wrapped my arms around her. "I thought you might be in here crying so I came to check on you."

The rest of the shower passed in silence as I washed her hair, then my own. We climbed out at the same time and dried off, heading to our bedroom to dress. I watched as Stephanie paused to look at her naked body in the full-length mirror, absently running her fingers over her abdomen.

"I still can't believe it," she said. "I wish it would have happened naturally. It would have hurt, but I think I could have dealt with it better. All I can do is keep going back to the fact that I lost it two weeks ago and didn't know it. Shouldn't I have known?"

"You couldn't have known," I told her. "It's early. The only way you would have known was if you'd had symptoms and you didn't."

"I still feel like I should have known," she said as she pulled on pajamas. "My gut should have told me something was wrong."

"Don't do this to yourself," I told her, knowing that it was useless. She would keep doing it anyway until she could accept that there had been nothing she could have done, no way could she have known.

She went downstairs to start looking for food and I went to the office to grab her old iPhone, hoping that the SIM card in my phone wasn't ruined so that I could check messages. I was thankful to see three voice messages and two text messages appear on the phone seconds after I turned it on. I read the text messages first.

 **One of the men from the bridge just died.** The message had been sent by Ramon two hours earlier.

A follow up message from Ramon had been sent twenty minutes ago. **The other guy is awake and talking, confessed that Sunnuchi ordered them to go after Stephanie. Police working to secure a warrant.**

One of the voicemails was from my mother, who had seen a report on the news and wanted to know if we were okay. A second voicemail was from Helen Plum with the same query. The last voicemail was Tank, saying he was staying in contact with the Trenton office on the status of the investigation into Sunnuchi.

I sent a text message to Tank. **Keep me posted.**

"I have two voicemails from my mother," Stephanie told me when I arrived in the kitchen. "I don't want to call her back."

"I had a message from her too, along with my own mother."

Stephanie was making a peanut butter and olive sandwich on the kitchen island and scrolling through her phone. "Four text messages from Grandma, three from Lula, two from Connie. All of them asking if I'm okay." She went back to making her sandwich, cutting the olives in half as she placed them on top of the peanut butter. "I don't know what to say to them. I didn't get hurt, but I'm not okay."

This was a problem that came with not having told anyone about the pregnancy. We were either going to have to keep this information to ourselves and suffer in silence, or relive the pain by retelling it again and again.

"Do you want to tell them, or keep it quiet?" I asked as I grabbed a beer and leftover vegetarian lasagna from the refrigerator.

Stephanie didn't answer until she'd taken a bite of her sandwich and swallowed. "I don't know if I want to tell them."

I thought that was a bad idea. "I can tell them if you don't want to do it."

"I'll think about it. It would be better to wait until after tomorrow anyway. They'd just have questions about the procedure and how I was doing after it."

We were in bed by nine that evening, something unheard of in our house unless there was a substantial amount of sex planned for the night. Neither of us could sleep. I wasn't exactly sure what thoughts were going through Stephanie's mind, but mine was going back to my guilt over my uncertainty about the baby. Part of me wanted to tell Stephanie, to get the weight off my chest. I didn't keep secrets from her anymore unless it involved government clearance. But I knew it would hurt her, and I didn't want her to hurt any more than she already was. I wanted to take her pain away and bear it all myself.

A text message buzzed on my phone and briefly lit the dark room. It was from Tank.

 **Sunnuchi has been apprehended by the police. The DA is making sure that Judge Hamilton is the one who gets the case. He can't be bought.**

"That's good," Stephanie said as she read the text over my shoulder. "I was worried about Grandma."

Stephanie eventually fell asleep, seeming able to relax once she knew Sunnuchi wasn't going to be kidnapping Edna or blowing up our house. Still unable to sleep, I got up and went to the office to work. I threw myself into reading shift reports, answering emails, and the financial statements from April which kept me occupied until it was time to get dressed for the day.

We arrived at St. Francis at six-thirty and Stephanie registered for her procedure, which was due to start at eight. At seven, a nurse came out to collect Stephanie. She told me that the procedure would take between thirty and forty-five minutes and that the doctor would come out to talk to me once it was over. After that, I'd be allowed to sit with Stephanie in the recovery area. Once I was alone, I called the office and asked that someone attend the arraignment hearing for Sunnuchi. I wanted to know whether he was going to be in jail or out in the community almost the second the judge decided. I felt Stephanie's phone vibrate through her messenger bag and pulled it out. The display said it was her mother. She had been calling Stephanie ever since learning about the bridge incident, but Stephanie hadn't answered. I didn't want her mother giving her a hard time, so I made an executive decision and answered the phone.

"Carlos? I've been trying to call Stephanie since yesterday afternoon. Why hasn't she answered? All I've been hearing about is how she got thrown off a bridge and you jumped in after her," Helen said, sounding both worried and annoyed.

"She didn't get hurt yesterday," I said. "But there has been some other stuff going on that she didn't feel up to talking about."

"What stuff?"

I sent up a quick prayer that Stephanie wouldn't hate me for telling her mother. "Stephanie found out she was pregnant in April and she went to her doctor yesterday after we got out of the river to make sure everything was okay with the baby. The doctor discovered that she'd miscarried two weeks ago, but that her body hadn't completed the miscarriage. We're at the hospital and she's having a procedure right now."

Helen was silent for a moment. "I wasn't expecting anything like this. I never suspected she was pregnant."

"She wanted to wait until the first trimester was over before we told anyone. She wasn't sure she wanted to tell anyone about the miscarriage, but I think you need to know. I don't want you giving her grief about not calling you back or asking us about having children for a while. She's having a hard time with this," I told her.

"I know how to be sensitive, Carlos," Helen snapped. "I don't need you telling me how to treat my own daughter."

I bit my tongue to hold in my reply. "I don't know how Stephanie is going to feel about me telling you, or whether she'll want to talk about it."

"I'll leave that up to her," Helen replied. "Let me know how she's doing after the procedure."

A text message from Eric Jones had come through on my phone while I'd been talking to Helen.

 **Sunnuchi is being held without bond because of being FTA on the initial murder charges and being considered a danger to the community. Lawyer wants to appeal it, but I don't think he'll get it.**

Knowing Sunnuchi was going to stay behind bars was one worry off my chest.

"Mr. Manoso?" I looked up to see a woman in blue surgical scrubs standing in front of me. I nodded.

"I'm Dr. Sheila Fuschetto, Stephanie's obstetrician," she said, taking a seat next to me. "I wanted to let you know that she is in recovery. The D&C went well, and I don't expect any complications."

"Thank you," I said, willing myself to ask the next question. "Do you know what may have caused her to have a miscarriage?"

The doctor shook her head. "It's likely that there was a genetic problem, but unless we send the tissue off for testing, we'll never know for sure. I told Stephanie that we could do that, but that I didn't think it was necessary at this point. This was her first pregnancy and first miscarriage. Most women who have a miscarriage go on to have perfectly health pregnancies afterwards. I saw nothing abnormal with her blood work or her uterus that would indicate any problems with sustaining a pregnancy in the future."

So we could try again. That knowledge was one more weight off of my chest.

Dr. Fuschetto and I headed back towards the recovery area while she explained restrictions and expected symptoms over the next two weeks. No sex, no tampons for the next two weeks until Stephanie's follow up appointment. She would likely have some pain and bleeding for a few days, and that we should immediately call if any signs of infection appear. Dr. Fuschetto also said that we should wait until after Stephanie had experienced a menstrual cycle before attempting to get pregnant again. She said she'd explained all of this to Stephanie prior to the procedure and would explain it again before we left.

It was ten by the time we pulled into our driveway. I helped Stephanie out of the car and up to the house. She was still slightly groggy from the anesthesia and wanted to lay down on the couch. She had been given prescriptions for an antibiotic and a painkiller, which I'd filled at the hospital pharmacy. I had just handed her the first dose of each when my phone rang. It was Helen Plum.

"How is Stephanie?" she asked.

"We just got back," I replied, going into the kitchen to talk. "The procedure went well."

"Do you need me to do anything? Clean? Bring dinner?"

"I'll let you know if we need anything," I said, hoping she'd get the hint to not bother us at the moment.

I disconnected from Helen and went back to the living room. "Who were you talking to?" Stephanie asked.

I took a moment to answer. "Your mother. She wanted to know how you were doing." I looked up at her to see a look of confusion. "She'd called while you were at the hospital and I told her."

Stephanie's jaw dropped open. "Why would you tell her? I didn't want to tell anyone."

"You said you weren't sure if you wanted to tell anyone. I made the decision to tell her because I thought it was best for you."

Stephanie's expression was angry. "It wasn't your place to tell her."

I raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? How was it not my place?"

"Because it's my body, my medical stuff. It's my business whether or not I want to tell anyone," she shot back, the grogginess gone.

"You're my wife and that was my child. That makes it my business as well."

"A child you didn't even want," Stephanie said. I stilled and kept my expression neutral, not sure if I was being tested.

"Did you think I didn't see it?" she asked, tears filling her blue eyes. "I could tell you didn't want to have a baby. You weren't excited when I told you I was pregnant. That's why I kept telling you about all of that stuff. I _wanted_ you to be excited with me. But now it's gone, so you should be happy."

Anger bubbled up inside me at her words. But before I could speak, she shook her head and curled up on the couch, pulling a blanket off the back and wrapping it around her body. "Go to work, Ranger. I need to be alone for a while."

I was stunned by the sudden shift in the conversation. I'd been expecting to talk about how I'd felt about having a baby, but now she was ordering me away.

"Stephanie—," I began, but she interrupted me.

"I don't want to talk."

I could be just as stubborn as she was being. "If you want space, I'll go work upstairs. But I'm not leaving you home alone today."

"I DON'T WANT YOU HERE!" Stephanie yelled. There were tears running down her cheeks and she was taking deep breaths to try to keep herself together. She wasn't the only one. Her words had hit me like punch to the gut. We stared at each other for a full minute, neither of us willing to move or blink. I finally broke the silence.

"I'll leave, but only if someone else is here with you. Who do you want?"

She looked ready to yell again, but I held up a hand. "It isn't a negotiation."

"My mother," she replied sulkily. "Since you already told her."

I went to the kitchen and called Helen, asking her to come over and stay with Stephanie for a while. She said she would be right over. Stephanie had turned on the television and was staring at while she laid on the couch. She didn't look over at me when I sat down in the chair perpendicular to her.

"Your mother is on her way over."

"Fine."

We sat in silence until there was a knock at the front door. Bob began barking and I opened it to find Helen and Edna. They pet the dog as they walked in.

"Is everything okay?" Helen asked.

"She doesn't want me here right now," I replied. "She's upset that I told you. I told her I'd leave for a while, but I didn't want her to be alone."

Helen nodded, understanding that I wouldn't be happy if she left until I returned. I had little doubt that Stephanie would try to shake her mother and grandmother once I was gone.

Stephanie sat up as we all walked into the living room. The look she gave her mother and grandmother was sadness mixed with trepidation. She was undoubtedly expecting that they'd be upset with her for not telling them she was pregnant or about the miscarriage. I grabbed my keys from the table as Edna sat down on one side of Stephanie and Helen took the other. I told them I'd be back by five and left through the back door.

I wasn't angry with Stephanie for asking me to leave, but I was angry that she thought I didn't care about the baby being gone. The fact that she had been aware of some of my doubts about having a baby weighed on me. She hadn't been exactly right—I'd never _not_ wanted the baby, but I'd questioned whether I was ready for it. In my mind, those were two very different things. She might not see it that way, but I still intended to explain myself—and apologize—when I got home. But she'd been completely wrong when she said that I could be happy about it being gone.

I went to the office and headed straight for the gym. A hard workout would help me work through some of the intense feelings I'd been battling for the past twenty-four hours. I pushed myself to the limits of my speed and endurance on the treadmill, hoping I'd sweat out some of the guilt and pain. It was a discipline I'd learned during the Army, and it had been in contrast to the way I'd dealt with my feeling as a teenager, when I'd pick fights with someone just to have the chance to hit something. But after five miles on the treadmill, I wasn't feeling any better. I climbed off the treadmill, put on a pair of boxing gloves, and began hitting the punching bag. I started feeling a little better as the punches intensified. I wasn't sure how long I'd been beating the bag, but when I felt a sharp pain in my hand, I realized it was time to stop.

"You okay?" I turned to find Tank standing in the doorway of the gym.

"I think I broke a bone in my hand," I said, wincing slightly as I pulled the glove off. My knuckles were swollen and there were a few small cuts visible.

"You've been kicking that bag's ass for over an hour so I'm not surprised," he replied. "What's going on that has you working out this hard?"

I threw the gloves in the bin set aside for gear that needed cleaned. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Does it have anything to do with the reason you and Stephanie were at the hospital this morning?"

I turned slowly to look at Tank, ready to beat his ass for invading my privacy. He showed no fear, only determination as I gave him a look that would have had lesser men cowering.

"If you already know, then why are you asking?"

"I don't know why you were there," he replied. "I had been checking on your location and saw you were at St. Francis. I checked their system and saw that Stephanie was checked in at the outpatient center, but I didn't go any further than that. I don't know why she was there."

I debated telling Tank, remembering how pissed Stephanie had been when I'd told her mother. Tank would tell Lula, unless I asked him not to.

"Hit the showers, then come up to seven," Tank said while I brooded. "You look like a man who needs a few beers."

Thinking his suggestion sounded like a good idea, I was showered, dressed, and in the elevator going up to my old apartment within twenty minutes. I stepped inside and found Tank there with a six pack of my favorite beer. He opened a bottle and handed it to me before opening one for himself. We headed to the living room and I downed half the bottle before either of us spoke. I told Tank about Stephanie wanting to have a baby, about getting pregnant quickly, the miscarriage news, and my struggle with uncertainty about my readiness for a child. He listened intently, sipping his beer as I spoke.

"I get it," he said. "Lula's wanted a baby so bad she could taste it, but I've never been that enthusiastic. It made her happy, so I went along for the ride. But then it got frustrating when she wasn't getting pregnant, and then when we kept getting turned away by the adoption agencies, so I really didn't want to have a kid. I had planned to tell Lula that the night Stephanie called to ask us about Missy's baby. I agreed to go meet with her, but if it didn't work out, I was going to tell Lula I was done with the whole baby thing. I was worried she'd leave me, but I couldn't do it anymore. And even after we met Missy and she said she wanted us to adopt the baby, I still wasn't what I'd call excited. I was relieved that I wouldn't have to hear Lula cry about it anymore, but I still didn't know if I wanted a baby. We went with Missy to her doctor last week so that she could meet us and we could see the ultrasound being done."

Tank looked down at his feet as he continued, draining the last of his beer before he spoke. "When I saw the baby and heard the heartbeat, it hit me that I was going to be this baby's dad. And I sort of passed out."

I felt my lips twitch and tried to hide it by taking a sip of my beer. "You fainted? The way you did when you found out you were engaged to be married to Lula the first time?"

Tank glared at me. "You promised to never bring that up again."

"The promise only held as long as you didn't faint again."

" _Anyway_ ," Tank began as he opened a second bottle of beer. "I feel ready for the baby now. Except I don't know what to call him because Lula and I can't agree on a name."

"I was starting to feel ready for the baby," I said. "But I don't know if Stephanie will believe me when I tell her."

Between the workout and talking to Tank, I was feeling calmer by the time I arrived back at the house at five. I found Helen and Edna in the kitchen loading dishes into the dishwasher.

"We made up some meals and put them in the freezer," Helen said when I walked in the backdoor. "You'll have dinner for the rest of the week."

"Thanks," I said, looking through the kitchen to the living room.

"She's upstairs taking a shower," Edna informed me. "We told it might help her feel a little better."

"How has she been?"

"She's hurting, and she feels bad for yelling at you earlier," Helen replied. "She didn't want to talk to us at first, but after a while she opened up and afterwards she said she was glad you told me."

That was good. Stephanie needed the chance to talk to someone about this besides me. I couldn't relate to the woman's perspective on the matter, plus I had as much emotional involvement as she did. I said goodbye to Helen and Edna as they left before heading upstairs to check on Stephanie in our bedroom. Her hair was wrapped in a towel and she was pulling on a pair of black yoga pants.

"I didn't hear you come in," she said when she realized I was standing there. "Are my mother and grandmother still here?"

I shook my head. "No, they just left. They said they'll call you tomorrow."

Stephanie finished dressing and began brushing her wet hair. "I'm sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

I walked across the room and sat down next to her on the bed. "You don't have to be sorry. It's been a hard couple of days."

"I accused you of not wanting our baby and being happy that it was gone. It was horrible of me."

I moved up on the bed to rest my back against the headboard while she finished brushing her hair. Once she was done, she moved up to sit next to me and I reached for one of her hands. She looked down at our joined hands and pulled my hand closer to her face.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

"I spent too much time with the punching bag." She rubbed my knuckles tenderly, which made them hurt, but I didn't want to tell her that.

"I never asked you if you were okay," she said quietly, and the look of shame in her eyes brought a lump to my throat. "Are you okay?"

The words were so simple, but they got to me. I blew out a shaky breath and tore my gaze away. I wanted to keep it together for her, but I suspected that was the wrong thing. Maybe she needed to see me vulnerable, to see how I really felt to understand that I was there with her.

I tried to open my mouth, but couldn't find my voice. My throat was constricted and my vision was starting to blur. The only thing I could do was shake my head.

She wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. I could feel her tears against my skin as my own started to fall. Being there with her in that moment felt right—the release I'd been looking for all day. Running to the point of exhaustion and beating the crap out of a punching bag didn't come close to matching it. I wasn't sure how long we sat on our bed, holding each other and crying, but we eventually laid down facing each other while we held each other close.

"I'll admit that I wasn't excited when you told me you wanted to have a baby, or when you found out you were pregnant," I said. "It wasn't that I didn't want a baby, I just wasn't sure if I was ready. I'd thought I would have more time to get ready for it, but you got pregnant so quickly. I kept thinking about all the things that would change once we had a baby. I worried about us growing apart. I thought about the limitations it would place on us when we had a child to consider. But I was starting to get excited about it. I kept thinking about how sexy your body was getting. I was looking forward to seeing you visibly pregnant. I wondered if we were having a boy or girl. I was worried about being a good father."

"You already are a good father," Stephanie said. "You're a good father to Julie."

I shook my head. "That's different. I wasn't involved much when she was little. It's only been in the years since the kidnapping that we've had any sort of meaningful relationship. I was just the man she knew as her father who came to visit her a few times a year. I wasn't the one do the day-to-day thing. My father didn't do that kind of stuff with us either. He was busy working sixteen hour days, six days a week when we were kids to keep a roof over our heads, so it was my mother and grandmother doing everything. I don't know exactly what to do to be a good father who is fully involved in my child's life from the beginning. I guess that was probably the thing that bothered me the most."

Saying it out loud to Stephanie was what had finally clenched it for me. That was where the biggest majority of my doubt had been. The changes to our lives was there, but it seemed small now.

"I don't think there is a book on what makes a good parent," Stephanie said, running hand across my cheek. "I think you just do the best you can. I think you probably screw up sometimes, but learn from your mistakes and try not to screw up in a way that can't be fixed. You know what you wish you would have had as a child, and you've seen the kind of influence that you and Ron have had on Julie. I've been worried about being a good mother. I have a good mother, but I don't want to be exactly like her. I want to be more understanding and sympathetic of my child, especially if they turn out to be nothing like me."

I leaned forward and kissed her. "I should have told you this from the beginning. I feel like an idiot now."

"When we first started dating, I asked you to open up to me more. You've done more than I ever thought you would. I don't expect that you're always going to open up to me the way I would like you to. It's just not in your personality."

"Not many women would be that understanding."

"Good thing you found me then."

We were quiet for a few minutes as we laid together. "Do you want to try again?" I asked her. "Once the doctor says it's okay?"

"I don't know," Stephanie replied. "I don't know if I could go through this again."

"The doctor said most women go on to be able to have children," I reminded her.

"I know, but then I think about Emilio and Lucy and how much trouble they had. Or Lula and Tank. I can't do this again and again. It hurts too much."

We didn't have to make a decision in that moment, especially given how raw the feelings were, but I knew without a doubt that I wanted a child with Stephanie.


	5. Chapter 5

" _ **Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it allows me to survive, and better than that, to thrive with passion, compassion, and style." ~Maya Angelou**_

There were waves of heat coming off of the black top as Stephanie and I drove towards Newark in the middle of a sweltering mid-July day. We'd taken the day off to go visit Tank and Lula, who had brought home their new son, Pierre Montgomery, Jr, four days before.

"I'm trying to imagine Lula as a mother," Stephanie said. "But I just can't do it. I think I have to see it for myself for it to really sink in."

"I see a lot of jail time in Lula's future," I replied. "I keep picturing a pit bull and the ruined body of anyone who insults her child."

Tank and Lula had purchased a house three blocks away from my parents and had moved in three days before Missy Kruzic gave birth. They had stayed in Trenton for the next few days while waiting out the mandatory seventy-two hour period for Missy to sign the relinquishment papers, heading home once the paperwork was signed. Tank had taken three weeks paid leave to stay home and help Lula adjust to having a new baby in the house. They had taken parenting classes at the local hospital, though Tank had informed me that Lula had nearly gotten them thrown out when she kept telling the instructor how her crack-addicted mother had raised her and that she'd made it out alive.

I was worried about how Stephanie would handle the visit. It had been just over two months since the miscarriage, and she was mostly back to her old self. I had noticed that she would get quiet whenever someone had a baby around or talked about someone being pregnant, but she was pushing through it. We'd both thrown ourselves into work, staying later than usual, working together on Saturdays, and picking up patrol shifts when someone would call off. The men in the office probably wondered why we were suddenly working so much more, but they didn't ask.

She hadn't gone back on birth control at this point, which I'd taken as a good sign that she might be willing to try again, but we also hadn't had sex since the miscarriage. I'd initiated it a few times, but she'd told me she wasn't ready. I had even went as far as to buy condoms so that she would understand that I wasn't trying to push her into getting pregnant again right now, but that I wanted her. I'd stopped trying a couple of weeks ago, deciding that I would let her approach me when she was ready. But the waiting was agony.

Tank and Lula lived in a two-story brick house similar to my parents' house. There was a white porch on the front of the house with a white wooden swing suspended from the ceiling. The yard was small for the house, but average for the neighborhood. I parked on the street in front of the house and we climbed up the wooden steps to the porch. Lula answered the door before we could even knock. She was wearing a neon green t-shirt that was so tight across her chest I could tell that she wasn't wearing a bra and orange shorts that barely covered her ass. Her air was standing straight out at all angles and there were heavy bags under her eyes.

"Thank God you're here," she said, hugging Stephanie tightly. "I need to see someone other than Tank and the baby. I need human contact. I need a donut. I need fried chicken."

"We've had donuts and fried chicken," Tank said, appearing over Lula's shoulder. "You just forgot."

He didn't look as bad as Lula, but I could tell he hadn't been sleeping much. He was wearing a gray t-shirt and basketball shorts that looked like they'd been worn for a day or two.

"Oh, maybe I did. I'm so fuckin' tired I can't think straight," Lula said. Tank nudged her shoulder.

"Language."

"Fuck that, he's asleep," Lula said, walking back into the living room with the rest of us on her heels. "I can say _fuck_ all I want to when he ain't around. Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck, fuck, fucker."

"But you need to get out of the habit of saying it so you don't slip up and say it in front of him," Tank said, taking a seat on a brown sofa. "I don't want his first word being _fuck._ My parents would kill us both."

Lula rolled her eyes and collapsed into a recliner. "Glad you guys could come up to see us."

There were two full minutes of silence while Stephanie and I tried to figure out whether or not they'd fallen asleep. I cleared my throat, startling them both awake.

"We brought you a gift," Stephanie said, handing Lula a blue gift bag. "Something from your registry, plus a little something for you guys."

Lula pulled out tissue paper and her eyes got wide. "You got us the Baby Bjorn!" She pulled out a black contraption with straps that was meant to carry the baby around on your chest. "Thank you! My arms are so tired from carrying him around. He weighs a ton."

"How did he weigh when he was born?" Stephanie asked.

"Six pounds, four ounces," Tank said, his expression making it clear that Lula was being overdramatic. "He's put on seven ounces since he came home from the hospital."

"He feels heavier," Lula said, trying to put the carrier around her body. "When you carry him around twenty hours of the day, he starts to feel like a cement block."

"The pediatrician said he has colic," Tank said. "What else is in the bag? Tell me it's booze."

Lula looked in the bag and pulled out the bottle of wine we'd brought. "It is. I don't know much about wine, but it sounds fancy."

The sound of a baby crying rang out of a white monitor sitting on the coffee table. Lula looked ready to cry. "He's only been asleep twenty minutes."

Tank left to get the baby while Lula read the Baby Bjorn instructions and swore about how difficult the instructions were to read.

"I'll be glad when Tank's parents get here next week," Lula said. "I need a break. I need someone to hold him and feed him a bottle long enough so I can take a shower and sleep."

"What about Tank?" Stephanie asked Lula.

"He ain't good at it. Any time the baby starts crying when Tank holds him, he hands him off to me because he thinks the baby needs a _female touch_. A bunch of bullshit if you ask me."

Tank reappeared a minute later with the baby. He was wrapped in a blue blanket covered in footballs. I could tell from his complexion that the biological father had either been African-American or dark-skinned Latino.

"You want to hold him?" Tank asked Stephanie. She nodded and held out her arms for the baby.

The baby quieted when he looked up at Stephanie's face, his eyes attempting to focus on her. She smiled and reached for one of his hands.

"Hi, Pierre," she said, causing Tank to splutter.

"We're calling him Joe," he said. "His middle name is Joseph."

I raised an eyebrow at Tank, wondering why he couldn't have chosen a better nickname for his kid. Not that it was any of my business, but the name Joe still stirred a slightly jealous emotion in me that I didn't like to acknowledge.

"He's a cute baby," Stephanie said. "And not white, which will probably be easier on you guys."

"Yeah, maybe we won't be accused of kidnapping him all the time," Lula said. "If it weren't for Missy being around, I'd just tell him I cheated on Tank with a white guy and had him."

"How is Missy doing?" Stephanie asked, guiding the conversation away from the bizarre idea.

"She's doing real good. She said she wants to give us some time with him without interfering, so she's gonna stop by and visit him when she heads up to Harvard next month," Tank replied. "We are going to send her pictures and keep in touch through phone calls and texts messages while she's at school. She'll try to come down once a month if she can. If not, she'll come visit him on her breaks, and we might try to take him up to see her some times."

I watched Stephanie hold baby Joe and talk to him. She seemed to be enjoying the baby, but I also saw the trace of sadness in her expression. We had told my parents about the miscarriage since hers had also known, but decided against telling our siblings or friends. Tank had kept his word and hadn't mentioned it to Lula, but I caught him staring at me as I watched Stephanie. He understood what I was doing and jerked his head towards the kitchen. I got up and followed him out of the room while Lula celebrated her success at attaching the Baby Bjorn correctly.

"How's she doing?" Tank asked quietly as he handed me a beer from the refrigerator.

"Okay," I said. "She's not completely back to normal, but she's getting there. How's fatherhood?"

Tank shook his head. "It's like winning the lottery at the exact same time as you get hit by a bus. I still can't believe it. But I love him already. He may cry all the time and shit like nothing I've ever seen, but I love him."

"He's a pretty cute kid," I replied. "I don't know a lot about raising babies, but I do know that the crying stops eventually."

"Are you guys going to try again?" Tank asked quietly. I shrugged.

"I hope so, but she's not ready yet."

Stephanie volunteered us to watch the baby for a while so that Lula and Tank could shower and get a couple of hours of sleep. Tank actually kissed Stephanie and Lula started crying. They were clearly a mess. I took the baby from Stephanie and sat on the couch with him while he sucked down a bottle.

"You're so good with babies," she commented after watching us for a few minutes. "They relax because you're so calm."

"I haven't had to be up with him every night since he was born. I don't know that I'd be as calm if I had."

I looked over at Stephanie when I didn't receive a response and saw that she had her head in her hands. I could see that she was trying not to fall apart, but not doing such a great job at it. I shifted the baby to my lap and held his bottle with one hand so that I could use my other hand to reach out and touch her.

"Babe," I said. "Talk to me."

She sniffled and sat up, wiped her eyes. "It just hurts. We should be just about to find out the sex of our baby. I should be at that awkward stage between regular and maternity clothes. We should be thinking about nursery colors and registering for baby stuff. But instead we're here visiting someone else's baby and pretending like everything in our life is fine."

"We can have our own baby," I told her. "We can try again."

"But what if it happens again?" she asked. "Can you live through that again?"

"It would hurt if that happened again, but we don't know that it will," I said. "I'm willing to take the risk for the possibility of this outcome." I indicated the baby in my lap. "I'm willing to worry for a few months to get one of these."

"Maybe I'm not meant to be a mother."

She watched as Joe finished his bottle and immediately began to cry. I picked him up and patted his back. "I don't believe that, Stephanie. Not for a minute. I want a baby with you. Back before we got engaged, you told me that you didn't want Dickie Orr to be the only man you were ever married to in your life. I don't want the only child I ever have to have been with a woman that I accidentally got pregnant during a one-night stand. A woman I barely knew at the time, and have never loved. I want the chance to be an actual father, not just the sperm donor who pays child support and occasionally visits. And I want this because any child would be lucky to have you as a mother."

I hoped the look in Stephanie's eyes meant that she believed me. But any further conversation was cut off as Lula came back into the room. She was showered and changed, which she swore made her feel like a new woman.

"He's exhausting, but I love him so much I can't stand to be away from him for too long," she said, taking the baby from me. "I never want him to leave me."

Stephanie was silent as we drove back to Trenton. I didn't want to push her too hard on the baby issue, but after spending two hours with Lula, Tank, and their baby, my desire was stronger than ever. It amazed me that our roles had completely reversed within a few months. But I understood her fear. It was more rational than mine had been.

I sat in bed with my iPad reading shift reports that evening while Stephanie showered. I'd been tempted to join her, but I knew she would have refused me. Even though I'd told myself I would wait for her to initiate, I was starting to get desperate. I'd already pulled out two condoms from the box and left them on my bedside table.

She didn't notice the condoms as she walked into the room wrapped in a towel. She sat down on the bed and began putting lotion on her arms and legs. I put my iPad on the table, took the lotion bottle from her, and began applying some to her back, moving my hands around to her breasts as I continued to rub the lotion into her skin. I moved my hands down her stomach and felt a shiver run through her body.

"Ranger—," she began, but I cut her off as I slid my hand between her thighs.

"I need this, babe," I whispered into her ear. "I need you. I have condoms, so you wouldn't have to worry."

She relaxed slightly, her breath hitching as I started moving my index finger in a circle. She nodded and turned around, letting me push her down on the bed as I kissed her. By the time I entered her, she was very close. I'd purposely gotten her to that point because I'd known I wouldn't last long.

"I needed that, too," she said a while later as we relaxed. "I didn't realize how much until now."

I traced her spine with the tips of my fingers. "I'm glad you feel that way. I was getting pretty pathetic."

She laughed softly. "Yeah, I'd noticed."

"I've been trying to decide if I should go back on the Pill," she said after a few more minutes. "That was part of the reason why I hadn't been ready."

I stiffened slightly. "We can use condoms. It wouldn't be the first time."

"I know. And I think we should just stick with them for now. I think I'm getting closer to wanting to try again."

Thank God.

"Just tell me when," I said. "It's your call."

That call came four weeks later on my birthday. It was a Sunday morning and I was looking forward to a day off. Once she was awake, Stephanie straddled me and wished me a happy birthday with a lusty kiss. I was looking forward a sex-filled morning followed by a carbohydrate-loaded breakfast. It was my birthday, after all. Once we were both breathless and ready, I reached over to the table for a condom, but Stephanie caught my hand in hers.

"I'm ready," she said as she lowered herself onto me. I let out a groan that was filled with both desire and happiness. _What a birthday_ , I thought as she rode me slowly. _Maybe we'll make that baby today._

It may have been my birthday, but we somehow ended up on the beach at Point Pleasant. I liked the beach, and didn't mind seeing Stephanie in her blue bikini. Especially since she was willing to get pregnant again. There wasn't much of anything that I wouldn't do for Stephanie, but especially now. She could probably even convince me to go shopping with her.

"I'm going to get a beer," I told her. "Do you want anything?"

"Water," she replied, her face buried into her towel. "Just in case we made a baby this morning."

The thought brought a smile to my face, and I kissed her back before I left.

"Did you enjoy your birthday?" Stephanie asked me that evening as we sat on the couch eating Chinese and watching a movie.

"I did. You've given thirty-six a very good start."

She kissed my cheek and reached under the couch, revealing a small box wrapped in silver paper.

"Happy birthday."

"You already told me you're willing to get pregnant again," I said, accepting the box. "Nothing short of you giving birth is going to beat that."

I unwrapped the box and found an elegant crystal picture frame. A small silver plaque at the top was engraved with our last name and behind the glass where a picture would be visible was a small, hand-written noted.

 _Insert baby Manoso here._

"I was going to use this to tell you that I was ready to try again," she said. "But I changed my plan on a whim this morning."

I leaned over to kiss her. "Both are great ways to tell me, though the whim was very fun."

"It was fun," she said. "Want to _whim_ again?"

"Absolutely."


	6. Chapter 6

" _ **Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."**_ __ _ **Antoine de Saint-Exupery**_

Getting pregnant apparently wasn't an issue for us because three weeks after my birthday, Stephanie presented me with another positive pregnancy test. My heart had stuttered a little when I read the test and a small smile had crossed my face.

"But I'm not getting excited about it," she said. "I don't want to get excited until we've had an ultrasound and see a baby and hear a heartbeat."

I was excited. I wanted to kiss her and take her to bed for the rest of the morning, but I didn't. I knew she was nervous, and I understood.

Stephanie went back to her doctor for another intake and they calculated her due date as April twenty-sixth, which would have been my Grandma Rosa's eighty-seventh birthday. But she had died from cancer shortly before our first wedding anniversary.

The seven weeks between discovering Stephanie was pregnant and the ultrasound scheduled on October fourteenth were filled with anxiety and questions. She wasn't experiencing any morning sickness this time, and the exhaustion and breast tenderness weren't quite as severe. She worried that this was a sign that there might be something wrong with the pregnancy. I told her maybe it was a sign that her body was handling it better than before. I had no idea if symptoms were any indicator of how well a pregnancy was going to go or not, but I wanted to help relieve her worries as much as possible. She kept quiet about the pregnancy. She didn't give me details about what was happening every week, and she didn't sit up nights reading her pregnancy book. She went to the bathroom twenty times a day, always worried about finding blood. It felt like she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Meanwhile, I'd been admiring the subtle ways Stephanie's body had started to change again, had been thinking quite a bit about whether I wanted a boy or girl, had started checking out bigger houses on the internet, and had even been sneaking reads of the pregnancy book while Stephanie was in the shower or out of the house. She'd almost caught me once, but I'd acted like Bob had grabbed it to eat it and that I'd been putting it back where it had been sitting on her bedside table. I'd later bought Bob a donut as an apology for scolding him for something he hadn't done.

Stephanie had tossed and turned all night before the ultrasound. I knew she was scared, especially when she threw up for the first time that pregnancy right before we left the office that afternoon.

"I'm so nervous," she said, her knee bouncing as we drove through town to the doctor's office. I held her hand and brought it to my lips.

"You've been stressed about this for almost two months. Today we'll get to see our baby and hear its heartbeat and then you can relax and get excited."

"But what if—,"

"We aren't talking about _what if._ We are walking in there with the assumption that we are going to see a healthy baby."

I knew it was easier said than done for Stephanie, and I didn't want to admit that I also had some anxiety over the thought of another miscarriage, but I was pushing it away.

The lobby of Dr. Fuschetto's office was painted pale yellow and had brown chairs lining three of the walls. Tables were situated between some of the chairs. Magazines advertising women's health and pregnancy were neatly stacked on a few of them. A couple of pieces of art hung on the wall along with posters on healthy living and pregnancy. Stephanie signed in at the front window and came to sit next to me. There were two other women in the lobby, one who looked to be in her fifties. The other one, in her thirties, was hugely pregnant. Stephanie had a strong grip on one of my hands.

"If this is how tight your grip is before an ultrasound, I can only imagine how it will feel when you're giving birth," I told her, hoping she would smile.

"Sorry," she said, letting go of my hand. I immediately took hers back.

"I was joking," I said. "Remember jokes? They're supposed to make you laugh."

She rolled her eyes, but I thought I saw her lips twitch.

"Stephanie Manoso?" a woman called out from a door next to the check-in window.

We followed the woman through the door, making a stop at a scale for Stephanie to get weighed before we were shown into an exam room. The woman instructed Stephanie to strip from the waist down and handed her what looked like a large sheet of tissue paper to cover with before she left the room.

"That's supposed to cover you?" I asked.

"Yes," Stephanie replied as she pulled off her jeans. "Movies and television give unrealistic images of pretty pink gowns that cover you perfectly when you go to the gynecologist. This is the reality."

Being a woman was a pretty shitty gig sometimes, I decided. And it only made me appreciate them more.

The room had a small set of cabinets and a sink in one corner of the room. Computer screens were set up on the ultrasound machine with another one situated on a wall next to the exam table. I took a seat in the chair next to the table and we had to wait for nearly twenty minutes before the doctor came in.

"Hello, Stephanie," she said, smiling brightly as she came into the room. "How have you been feeling?"

"Panicked," Stephanie responded immediately. Dr. Fuschetto gave her a kind pat on the shoulder.

"I can understand that. How about physically?"

"No morning sickness, a little tired, but that seems to be passing. It made me worried that there was something wrong. I was sick and exhausted the last time."

"Symptoms can vary greatly from pregnancy to pregnancy, even with the same mother. It isn't usually any indicator of the health of the baby. I'll do the ultrasound first so you can relax. I'll do the exam last, in case your husband doesn't want to stick around for that."

"You would be right," I replied.

She moved Stephanie's t-shirt up on her abdomen before squirting a clear gel on her lower belly. She turned on the computer and began moving the ultrasound wand over Stephanie's abdomen. We couldn't see anything on our screen yet. Probably the doctor wanted to be sure of what was going on first. She examined the screen, hit a few buttons on a keyboard, and then turned on our monitor.

"There's your baby," she said. "And here's the heartbeat." With that she turned up the volume on a speaker and a rapid, muffled beat filled the room.

I felt Stephanie squeeze my hand and saw a tear slip down her cheek as she watched the monitor. The image wasn't the best, but I could hazard a guess at what was the baby's head and body.

The doctor moved around to look at different angles, taking measures. "The baby is right about two inches long and about half an ounce at this point. Everything seems to be developing normally."

She printed out a few copies of the stills she'd taken and handed them to Stephanie. "Baby's first photo shoot," she said. "Now I wanted to talk to you about whether you want to complete amniocentesis. Given that you're over thirty-five, it is recommended since you are at higher risk for having a baby with a genetic condition such as Down syndrome. But there is also a small risk of miscarriage with the procedure."

Stephanie immediately shook her head. "If we have a baby with any problems, we can handle it. We can afford to give it whatever care it needs. But I can't go through something that carries a risk of miscarriage. I can't go through that again."

The doctor nodded. "I understand. We can often times see the evidence of physical or genetic issues on the ultrasounds, but not always. So far, the baby looks perfectly healthy."

I spent the next twenty minutes in the lobby waiting for Stephanie to finish with the doctor. It gave me time to think about seeing our baby on the ultrasound for the first time. I'd seen pictures of Rachel's ultrasounds when she was pregnant with Julie, but I'd never been present for any of them. I'd never had the chance to hear her heartbeat before she was born. I was sure I'd never forgot the sound. It was a surreal feeling to know that my blood was flowing through tiny veins, helping to form a human being. I hadn't considered it that much when Rachel had been pregnant with Julie. I'd been more focused on staying alive on missions, with the occasional _holy shit, I got someone pregnant and married her_ flitting in and out of my thoughts. In my mind I kept picturing a little girl with curly brown hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. She looked a lot like Julie with the exception of the hair.

Something was niggling in the back of my mind. Was I hoping to make up for the experiences I'd missed out on with Julie with this baby? Was that why I wanted a girl? Maybe, maybe not. I was spared any more evaluation by Stephanie's appearance in the lobby. We walked out to the car and didn't speak until we were inside.

"Oh my God," Stephanie said, a broad smile crossing her face. "I _finally_ feel like I be excited about this."

She reached in her bag and pulled out the ultrasound photos. "There's really a baby in there, and it has a heartbeat and everything."

I couldn't help but smile at the relaxed look of happiness on her face. I pulled her into me and kissed her deeply, thankful that I could now show her how happy I was.

"I love you, babe," I told her. "It's ridiculous how much I love you."

She beamed at me. "Likewise. When did we get so sappy?"

"It's the baby's fault," I said as we pulled out of the lot. "Babies turn people into idiots."

"You're actually going to blame your sweet, innocent baby for the fact that you're actually a softy under that hard body and attitude?" she asked, pointing to the photo. "This little thing that didn't exist until three months ago and is only two inches long?"

"I have a feeling we'll be blaming a lot of stuff on that baby for years to come, so we might as well start now."

It was three in the afternoon as we drove through Trenton. Schools were letting out, and buses were clogging the roads. Kids made faces and rude hand gestures through the bus windows at the cars below.

"I don't want to go back to the office," Stephanie said as I turned down Hamilton. "Can we just go home?"

"You want to play hooky with two hours left in our shift after already being gone for an hour?"

She nodded. "I can't go back to work now and believe I'll actually be able to concentrate. Do you think the boss will let us off for the day?"

I shrugged. "Don't know. From what I hear, he's a real asshole."

"He has his moments. I've been sleeping with him for a few years now, so he might give me a break," she said, running a hand along my thigh. "And as long as we're being honest, I think he might have been the one to get me pregnant. I just thought you should know."

"I guess if he's the one who got you pregnant, then he owes you," I said as I pulled up in front of the house. "But unfortunately for me, I have to go back to work. I have a meeting with the attorney at five."

"Filing those divorce papers?"

"Damn right," I said, kissing her again before she climbed out of the car. "I'll let the boss know you won't be in as soon as I get done kicking his ass for fucking my wife."

She laughed as she walked up to the front door and let herself in. Seeing her truly happy for the first time in months made the world feel right again.

Stephanie's point about not being able to concentrate well at work after the ultrasound turned out to be pretty accurate. My mind kept wandering as I read emails and reports, meaning that I had to go back and re-read them a couple of times to even know what had been said. I was just about to leave for my appointment with my attorney when an email came through from Stephanie.

 **Check out the cute way I thought we could announce that we're having a baby.**

Attached was a picture of Bob, who looked pretty unhappy to be wearing a sign around his neck.

 _I'm going to be a big brother!_ __the sign read. One of the ultrasound pictures had been taped to the sign with the due date written below.

 _ **Babe. He's already lost his balls, now his dignity.**_

A reply came through a minute later.

 **It's cute, and I can email or text it to all of our family members and close friends at the same time to save us calling people.**

I grimaced at the idea.

 _ **Just make sure they know the baby isn't mine. Still haven't found that fucker that knocked you up.**_

 **Love you too. Bring me something home for dinner.**

I was meeting my attorney at a quiet restaurant in downtown Trenton for a drink while we discussed a lawsuit a former client had filed against the company several months ago because he claimed we hadn't protected his home properly. The fact that he'd left valuables out in the open in front of large windows that were easily broken didn't seem to matter to him. We should have been at his house before the crime even happened, according to him.

"Like I thought he would, the judge threw the case out. Basically called the guy a money-grubbing moron," John Wolowski told me as we accepted glasses from the bartender.

"I wasn't worried. We don't claim to be able to stop crime from ever happening," I said, looking over at my phone as it vibrated. The displayed told me it was my mother. I swiped the ignore button and went back to my drink. Another minute passed before I felt the phone vibrate again. Celia.

"Sorry," I said to John as I ignored the call. "Stephanie told our families today that we're expecting a baby by putting a sign around the dog's neck that said he was going to be a big brother and sending the picture to everyone. Now they're all burning up my phone."

"Congratulations," John said. "My daughter told us she was pregnant in a similar way, except she has this little dog that she stuffed into a t-shirt that said something about becoming a big sister. My wife thought it was adorable. I felt embarrassed for the dog."

"Same here. I'm going to stop and get him something on the way home. He deserves a reward after that kind of treatment."

I walked in the back door forty-five minutes later with vegetarian lasagna for me, a meatball sub for Stephanie, salads for both of us, and donuts for Bob. My phone had vibrated almost nonstop with calls, text messages and voicemails from my relatives since I'd left the restaurant.

"Aw, you brought me donuts, too?" Stephanie asked, peeking in the bakery bag.

"No, I bought them for Bob," I said, taking out a donut and tossing it to the dog. Bob caught it in mid-air and choked it down in two bites. "He's need something to help him deal with the embarrassment."

"It was cute. Everyone said so."

" _Everyone_ being the women, right?"

"So?"

Before we even sat down at the dining room table, Stephanie was unbuttoning her jeans.

"I think I'm going to have to start using that band thing," she said. "I had to lay down on the bed and suck in as much air as I could to get these zipped and buttoned, and I've been really uncomfortable all day."

"What band thing?"

"It's this band of material that you put around the top of your pants when you're pregnant and getting too big for your regular clothes, but aren't ready for maternity clothes yet. It helps keep your pants up and hides the fact that they aren't buttoned. I remember Valerie talking about them when she was pregnant with Beth, and I've read about them on the baby forums. I bought one back in the spring, but never got to use it."

I watched her for a minute as she began eating her sub. "I'm surprised you didn't have one of those before now. Think of all the overeating you could have done in the names of stress and holidays and no one would have known but you."

"Since when do you encourage my bad eating habits?"

"I don't really encourage them, but I do enable them. Especially since I let you work for me and don't expect you to meet the fitness requirements."

"Not everyone is required. Only the field office."

"Where do you think you work? Accounting?"

"Then why don't you make me meet them?" she asked. "It was never even mentioned when you told me I could work for you."

I polished off my salad and reached for my lasagna. "Because I've never expected you to meet them. Plus, I get to have sex with you, and if you're sore and tired from training, then I don't get to have sex with you."

"So banging the boss gets me more perks than just some leeway on my schedule?"

I didn't tell her it could pretty much get her anything she wanted at work. Why encourage that?

"And now you're having my baby, so five-mile runs and lifting weights is off-limits anyway."

"I should stay pregnant all the time then."

I spent the next hour after dinner returning text messages and phone calls. My mother and sisters had all cried and told me how happy they were for me. My brother had congratulated me on marrying her before I got her pregnant, and my Grandma Bella told me that she'd had a dream just the night before about us having a baby. She made us promise to visit when we were in Miami at the end of the month and to bring the ultrasound photos so she could look at her newest great-grandchild. The one person I hadn't heard from was Julie. Stephanie told me that she'd sent her a text message with the picture, but that she hadn't heard back from her either. I started to worry about what that could mean. Was Julie upset that I was going to have a child with Stephanie, one that I was sticking around to raise?

The doorbell ringing at seven-thirty made Bob start barking and had Stephanie and I wondering who was showing up unannounced. We valued our privacy, and our family and friends knew that we preferred they call before coming over. I walked over to the door and felt a jolt of surprise when I saw who was standing on the other side of the glass.

"Hi!" Julie said, rushing to hug me as I opened the door. "I bet you weren't expecting me."

"You're exactly right," I said, kissing the top of her head. "This is a little out of the way from Miami."

Rachel and Ron followed her inside, and we all headed to the living room. Stephanie came out of the kitchen looking as surprised as I was.

"Oh my gosh," she said, hugging the excited Julie. "What in the world are you guys doing here?"

"We came up to New Jersey because I had an interview at a private school," Julie said.

We all took a seat in the living room while Julie explained.

"I applied to go to the Chesterton Academy in eighth grade, but I'd been put on a wait list for that class. They contacted me last week to say that one of the sophomores is moving away and that I'm next on the waiting list. I had to come up here for an interview today, and afterwards they said that I was welcome to come to their school!"

"I just met with the Chancellor of that school two weeks ago to discuss becoming their security provider. They aren't happy with the company they have, so it looks like we are getting the contract," I said. "I didn't know you'd applied to go there."

"I never thought I'd actually get in," Julie replied. "So when we got the call to come up for the interview, I told Mom and Dad that I wanted to surprise you guys while we were here."

"We're glad to see you," Stephanie said. "Did you my text earlier?"

Julie shook her head. "I turned my phone off when we got here. I thought maybe Dad tracked my phone and it would ruin the surprise if he knew I was in New Jersey."

Stephanie laughed. "You'd probably be right." I rolled my eyes, but said nothing.

Julie reached for her phone and powered it up. "Now that I'm accepted, I wanted to ask you guys about something." She glanced at Rachel and Ron, who nodded.

"The school has dorms for the students who are here from out-of-state, but if you live within thirty miles, you can go to the school as a day student. I looked it up on Google Maps, and you are only fifteen miles from the school," Julie said, her expression pleading. "I'd love it if I could live with you guys while I to go to school here."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Even with the announcement of coming to school in Jersey, I hadn't expected her to ask to live with us. Weekend visits, yes, but not all the time.

"Julie, you've put them on the spot," Rachel said. "They may like to take a couple of days to think this over." She turned to me. "But we told the Chancellor we'd have an answer for her by next week, so we'd need to know by then if we need to sign her up to move into the dorms."

"You guys can talk it over while I call Jenny," Julie said. "I told her I'd let her know if I got in."

Julie was scrolling through her phone when she stopped dead in the center of the living room.

"Oh my God!" she squealed, turning around to face us. She launched herself at us, hugging us both.

"What?" Ron asked, confused.

"Stephanie's pregnant!" Julie said, bouncing up and down. "Oh my God, I have to call Jenny now and give her _all_ of the good news." With that, she hurried out of the room and towards the laundry room for her conversation.

"Congratulations!" Rachel said, looking genuinely happy for us. "But you aren't going to want to have to live with a sixteen year-old _and_ a newborn. Trust me, the newborn will be easier."

I glanced over at Stephanie to gauge her opinion on the matter. She knew what I was doing and spoke up.

"Well, my opinion matters least of all, but I think it would be great to have her here. We get along well, I love having her here, and she'd be an enormous help once the baby comes," she said. "But I'll leave the final say with you guys. She's your child."

I knew that Stephanie meant every word of what she'd said, and it felt good to know that she'd so easily accept my teenage daughter into our daily lives. Visiting for two weeks in the summer had been one thing, but to have her there daily and to take responsibility for her was on a different level.

"I agree," I said. "If it's what you want, then we'd be glad to have her live with us."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Julie said, rushing into the room. "I'm so happy. The idea of sharing a bathroom with all those girls was starting to freak me out."

"We're pretty happy about it, too," Ron admitted. "We weren't looking forward to her living on campus."

"Why not?" Julie asked. "Don't you trust me?"

"Your father got arrested at fourteen for stealing a car and went to juvenile detention, and I got pregnant and married at eighteen. You don't have genetics on your side when it comes to good decision-making in your teen years," Rachel said.

"I'm not going to start stealing cars, and I'm definitely not going to be having unprotected sex with a guy I just met," Julie said, taking a seat next to Stephanie. "I have to know them at least week before we get to that."

Stephanie did her best to cover up her near-laughter. Rachel flushed, and Ron just shook his head.

"That's you," Rachel said to me. "That smartass inside her. All you. And you're going to be living with her all the time here soon, so you'll get to have it aimed at you. I won't miss that part. Much."

"I can handle it," I said, slinging an arm around Stephanie's shoulders. "I've been living with this smartass for four years."


	7. Chapter 7

" _ **If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life" ~Pablo Neruda.**_

Stephanie went back to reading her pregnancy book once the ultrasound had confirmed a healthy baby, and she was reading it as we sat in first class on our way to Miami. The book had a section that described what was happening each week in the pregnancy, and she was reading about what was going on in week fourteen.

"I'm officially in the second trimester as of this week," Stephanie reported. "And our baby is able to make some facial expressions like frowning and squinting. And it can pee now."

I raised an eyebrow. "That's good to know. Our baby is floating around in its own urine."

"It is three-and-a-half inches long and weighs an ounce-and-a-half. That's a big growth in two weeks," Stephanie said, ignoring my sarcasm. "That's probably why my belly is showing a little now."

It had seemed to happy overnight, but Stephanie's belly was now slightly more defined. If you didn't know her, you wouldn't suspect anything. Even those who knew her but didn't know she was pregnant might just think she'd put on a few pounds. I'd been enjoying running my hand down her abdomen and feeling the slight bulge over the past week.

Stephanie closed the book and turned to face me. "We both know that the most important thing is a healthy baby, so we don't have to say it. What are you hoping for– a boy or a girl?"

"Girl," I said immediately. I'd known I'd wanted a girl since the moment Stephanie had told me she was pregnant the second time. I'd had another questioning thought about whether I might be trying to relive the early Julie years with another baby, but decided it wasn't important.

"Really?" Stephanie asked, looking surprised. "Why do you want a girl?"

"I like girls," I commented. "I grew up with four sisters who drove me nuts, but I adored them. My mother and grandmothers were the ones who had taken care of me the most when I was a kid. I have a daughter already, so I know a little of what to expect."

"But you work with all men. I thought you might want a boy. Especially when you already have so many women in your personal life."

I shrugged. "I like the definition of having my personal life dominated by women and my professional dominated by men. It helps me separate those parts of my life from each other. Men are less emotional, and are going to do the job I ask of them with little to no questioning. Women worry, and they care what is happening to everyone on a deeper level. Women love you differently. Men tend to walk away, but women usually stay and fight it out. And it starts out that way from the time they are little."

I saw the corners of Stephanie's mouth twitch.

"What?"

She put an arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek. "You're adorable."

"Babe."

"I'm serious. I think you want a little girl because you want to be her hero. You want her to give you those big, sad eyes and say 'Daddy, help me please'. Then you can go in and save the day and be her hero," Stephanie's smile grew wider. "But you do know that girls like to play with dolls and have tea parties, right? There's no getting out of that. Even my dad had to play Barbies and tea parties on occasion."

"Not all girls are into tea parties and Barbies," I told her. "That's sexist."

" _I'm_ sexist?" Stephanie said incredulously. "You're the one wanting to be a savior to a little woman."

"I never said that. You did. And you're wrong."

The look Stephanie gave me said she thought I was full of shit. "Liar."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"A boy," she replied. "They are less emotional than girls, you don't have to deal with PMS when they get older, and you only have to worry about what _their_ penis is doing. With girls, you have to worry about what _all_ of the penises are doing and if they are doing it to her."

I stared at her for a moment before responding. "People probably assume I'm a sexist pig because I'm Latino and was in the military, but it turns out I married the sexist pig instead."

Stephanie's jaw dropped and she punched me in the arm. "I am _not_ a sexist pig!"

I began counting points off on my fingers. "You assume I want a girl because I want to be a hero to her. You assume that boys can't be as emotional or more than girls. You assume all girls want to play tea parties and Barbies, and that if I had a daughter I wouldn't be comfortable playing those with her. And you assume that the worry about what a boy is doing with his penis is less when you have the boy. That's pretty sexist, babe."

Stephanie crossed her arms over her chest. "I bet you have a response for all of those points."

"I already explained why I want a girl, and I wouldn't have an issue playing whatever game she wanted. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to know that I can be a man and have a tea party with my daughter. Growing up, my brother and I were the emotional ones. We were the ones yelling, getting into fights with other kids and our parents, slamming doors, and causing other problems. My sisters all had their moments, but for the most part they were all level-headed and more mature. And when it came to penises, it was definitely Emilio and me who were kept on the shortest leashes. My parents trusted my sisters more, even though Silvia screwed around as much as Emilio and I did."

I slid an arm around her. "Besides, I know some little girls tend to fall down and scrape their knees and jump off the garage roof pretending they are Wonder Woman."

Stephanie's lips twitched. "That's true. I have a feeling any child of ours is either going to rule the world or burn it to the ground."

Traffic was heavy as we made our way from the airport to the Rangeman building, making it almost one o'clock before we finally arrived in the apartment. We unpacked our suitcases and had just started a conversation about lunch when my phone rang. It was Rachel.

"Are you in Miami yet?" she asked.

"We just got to the apartment. Why?"

"We need to talk to you. We're about ten minutes from your building. Can we stop by?"

I was immediately on alert. Rachel and Ron had never come to my apartment in Miami. I'd always come to them.

"Sure. I'll tell the front desk to send you up."

I disconnected and relayed the information to the front desk.

"Rachel and Ron are stopping by in a few minutes," I told Stephanie.

"Why?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I have a bad feeling about it. They've never come here before. Never asked."

A knot formed in my stomach while I waited for the knock on the door. Rachel's tone hadn't been excited. It had been flat, a little detached. Serious.

When I opened the door to her and Ron a few minutes later, I saw that both of their expressions matched her tone. I showed them to the living room where Stephanie was already seated.

"What's going on?" I asked once they had taken seats next to each other on the couch. I watched as Rachel's eyes filled with tears as she looked over at Ron. In an odd move, he reached over to touch her with his right hand, even though she was sitting on his left side.

"I can't," she whispered to him.

"It's okay," he murmured. He turned to look at me and I felt my chest tighten. I knew what he was getting ready to tell me. I'd been dreading this for the past ten years, hoping that I'd never have to hear those words from them again.

"The tumor is back," he said. "We found out last week, and we immediately had the scans sent to Dr. Maurer. He consulted with my oncologist here, and we just left his office. It's truly inoperable this time, and I can't do radiation again because it's in the same spot."

I blew out the breath I'd been holding and rubbed a hand over my hair. "Damn it."

Rachel was crying softly, her face buried in her hands, and Stephanie was looking confused and concerned.

"The doctor gave me four months," Ron continued. "But he said only two of them are going to be decent. I'm already having some symptoms. I've had three seizures in the past month, I have a constant headache, I'm starting to lose some use of my left arm, and I've been losing my temper lately."

"So it's a brain tumor?" Stephanie asked. I nodded.

"He had one about ten years, but was able to have surgery for it."

"I always knew there was a chance it could come back," Ron said. "I'd prepared myself in case it did."

"How can you be so calm about this?" Rachel asked him. "How can you sit here and talk about being prepared to hear that you're dying?"

"Baby, I've had ten years that I'd been told I wouldn't have," he replied. He turned back to me, and I could see the emotion in his eyes.

"I owe the last ten years to you. If you hadn't found Dr. Maurer and paid for me to have the surgery, I'd have missed out on Tony's birth. We wouldn't have had Michael. I wouldn't have seen Julie and Olivia grow up. Julie would have been the only one to have had any memory of me, and it wouldn't have been much. She was only six."

"I had to do it," I told him. "You're Julie's father, and I had to do what I could to help you. For her. And because I think you're an okay guy."

Ron chuckled lightly. "Well I'm glad you don't think I'm a son of a bitch. But I got ten more years, and I can't ever repay you for that. I hate that I don't have more time with Michael, for him to remember me, and for us to do things together, but I can make videos, write letters for him to have as he gets older. The other kids have good memories to hold onto. I'm not afraid to die, and I'm going to make sure that I get what I can out of the last few months I have left."

Stephanie started to cry. She reached for a box of tissues and took one before passing the box to Rachel.

"Is there anything I can do to help you guys?" I asked.

Ron looked over at Rachel, who nodded as she wiped her eyes. "We're fine, financially. We have some savings. I have life insurance. The house has insurance to pay it off when I die. We don't have any credit card debt. I have disability insurance to cover us day-to-day until I die, then Rachel and the kids can get survivor benefits from Social Security. But there is one thing you can do. You can take back your legal rights to Julie once I die."

I didn't try to suppress the look of shock that crossed my face. "Why?" I asked after a minute. "You've been her legal father almost her entire life. Why change that when you die?"

"When you consented for me to adopt Julie, you told me that you knew it was best because you couldn't be the kind of father that you wanted for her at that point in your life. You said you wanted the best for her, for her to be happy," he said. "I hope I've been a good father to her. I've tried my best. In the years since the kidnapping, you've gotten closer to her. She loves you as much as she loves me. I know that. I was there for the early years, but I won't be here much longer. I won't get to see her graduate high school or pick a college," Ron's voice broke as he continued. "I won't get to walk her the aisle or play with her children, but you will. And I want you to do those things not just as her biological father, but as her legal father as well. She's going to be living with you soon, and you'll get to the day-to-day thing with her. You trusted her to me when you didn't think you could be there for her. This is me asking you to step back into that spot when I'm no longer here."

I felt tears prick my eyes, and I put my head in my hands for a second. "Jesus Christ, Ron," I said. I pulled myself together and straightened back up again. "What if Julie doesn't want this? I'm not going to force something on her that she has no interest in, even if it's what you want."

"I think she will,' Ron said. "It may come as a surprise at first, but I'll explain it all to her. And I've already looked into the legal process. You would have to file an adoption petition, but because she is over the age of twelve Florida law says she has to sign a consent form for the adoption to happen. It is ultimately up to her, but I'm hoping she'll do this for me."

"Do you want this, Rachel?" I asked. I waited for a response while she blew her nose.

"Part of me doesn't. I know it's not because of you, but because of the idea of losing Ron," she said. "He mentioned this to me when we first found out the tumor was back last week, and explained it to me the same way he did to you. I understand it, and I don't want him to worry about what's happening when—when—when he's no longer here."

I glanced over at Stephanie. Her expression told me that she was behind me all the way.

"Then if it's what Julie wants, I'll do it," I said.

"Thank you," Ron said. "We're going to tell the kids tonight, and we'll talk to Julie about this as well. We still want you to come over on Saturday so we can talk about the plans to get Julie moved up to New Jersey."

"Do you really think she's going to want to come up to Trenton if she knows she only has a few months left with you?" I asked. "I can't see it."

"She's going to Chesterton," he replied, determination evident in his tone. "I want this for her. Besides, she won't be coming up until the end of December. I'll probably be in bad shape by that point. It'll spare her from having to see me get so bad towards the end."

Rachel and I exchanged a brief look. Julie was going to fight him hard on this.

They left a few minutes later so that they could get home before the children got out of school. My plan for the day had been to spend a few hours in the office before taking Stephanie out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, but now I felt sick. I wanted to beat the shit out of something, then stay locked up in the apartment for the rest of the week.

Stephanie followed me into the kitchen and watched as I pulled a glass and a bottle of tequila out of a cabinet. I poured myself a drink and tossed it back, the liquid burning my throat as it went down. I felt her arms wrap around my waist.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can't imagine what this is like for you."

"He is Julie's father, and it's going to devastate her to lose him. I wish there was something I could to help them."

"You said you'd take your rights back by adopting Julie. I think that's the best thing you could do for Ron, and for Julie," Stephanie said. "Ron was right. Julie loves you, and even though she's going to be hurting I think she'll want this too."

I shook my head. "I don't, and I'm not going to try to talk her into it. I know I could never replace him, but it feels like I'm trying. Or that he's trying to replace himself."

Stephanie took the tequila bottle and poured more liquid into the glass. For a millisecond I thought she was pouring the drink for herself. I was about to open my mouth to ask her what the hell she was doing when she handed the glass to me.

"Have one more drink, then go down to your office and work. I think you need something to distract you right now."

I took her advice and spent the next few hours in my office, reviewing reports and working on personnel evaluations. Stephanie was working from the office in the apartment since she didn't have office space in Miami. When I finally quit at six-thirty, I went upstairs to find that she'd ordered meals from the restaurant we'd planned to go to that evening and was putting them on plates. I was grateful that she knew me and what I needed after day like this. I made love to her that night and laid awake to watch her sleep after we were done. I'd faced my own mortality numerous times over the years, certain that I wouldn't come out of a situation alive. I'd made my peace with God, hoped my family knew how much I loved them, and went head long into whatever situation I was facing, always astounded when I came out alive. Ron wasn't a man used to facing those types of situations. He'd faced it once, but this time he knew there was no hope. No way out.

It seemed as though I'd just fallen asleep when the apartment phone rang. I glanced at the clock as I reached for the receiver. It was a little after two in the morning.

"There's a girl here who says she's your daughter," Tyler Johnson said when I answered.

"Send her up," I said, jumping out of bed as soon as I hung up. I hurried into the closet and pulled on a t-shirt and running shorts.

"What's going on?" Stephanie asked groggily as I came back into the bedroom.

"Julie's here. She's on her way up."

I could hear the elevator ding as I walked towards the door, my hand on the knob when I heard a knock.

Julie was standing in the foyer dressed in black cotton shorts, flip-flops, and a purple t-shirt with the word _Aruba_ written in pink. She had a small tan purse slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She was five foot four, and while her features were mine, her body was Rachel's. A fact that had Ron and me debating whether to send her away to a convent until she was thirty or just kill all of the teenage boys within a hundred miles. But tonight she looked younger than usual, her brown eyes swollen and red from crying.

I stood aside to let her in and closed the door behind her. I had barely turned around when she threw her arms around me and started to sob. I held her close and breathed in the scent of coconut shampoo until she calmed down. I saw Stephanie standing outside the door to the bedroom, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts.

"Let's go sit in the living room," I said, guiding Julie through the apartment. She stopped to hug Stephanie, and they walked together to the living room.

"How did you get here? Do your Mom and Dad know you're here?" I asked. Julie shook her head.

"I walked down to the bus stop after they went to sleep."

Good God.

Stephanie stood. "I'll call them and let them know where you are," she said, rubbing my arm as she passed.

I took the seat next to Julie, who was staring blankly at the coffee table.

"How are you doing?" I asked.

She shook her head and more tears fell. "I can't believe it. It doesn't seem real. I can kind of remember when he was sick when I was little, but I didn't know it was so bad. I just remember him being gone for a while."

"You were too young to know the full story."

"He wants me to still go to Chesterton," she said after a couple of minutes. "I told him that I didn't want to go now, but he got mad and yelled at me, told me I was going and that was final. He's never yelled at me like that before."

"It's the tumor. It can affect his mood."

"That's what Mom said. He apologized later and cried. He said he wants to see me follow my dream while he can. He told me he wants you to do adopt me back after he dies," she said, looking over at me for the first time since she'd walked in the door.

"He asked me today, but I told him it has to be your choice. I'm not going to try to talk you into it, Julie. Even if it's what he wants."

She nodded. "He told me why he wants it. I told him that you can't replace him, but that I'd be okay with it. After I got kidnapped and you saved me, I used to do research online to see if there was any way that you could adopt me back so I could have three legal parents, but there wasn't. Dad knew that I had done that. He said he'd seen where I had done the searches when he would do random checks on what we'd been looking at on the internet. That's why he knew I'd be okay with this."

She blew out a shaky breath. "It isn't fair. Why does he have to die? Aren't there plenty of awful people in the world who could die instead?"

I didn't respond. I knew she needed to talk, to vent her feelings without someone telling her not to think or feel a certain way.

"He said that by the time I leave to come up to New Jersey he'll be pretty sick, so I won't have to see him so bad off. He said we can talk on the phone or Skype every day until he can't talk anymore. But it's not the same as seeing him in person."

"Would it help if I flew you down here every weekend?" I asked. She whipped her head up to look at me.

"Really?"

"You could fly out Friday after school and head back Sunday night in time for school on Monday. Then you can talk on the phone or computer the rest of the week."

"I'd like that," she replied quietly. "And even though he says he doesn't want me to see him so sick, I think he'd like it."

Stephanie came back into the room holding a pillow from the bed and a blanket. I suspected she'd been waiting for a lull in the conversation.

"Julie, I called your mom and told her you were here. I said you could sleep here, and we'd bring you home in the morning. She told me you weren't planning to go to school tomorrow so we don't have to have you back early," she said. "But she wasn't very happy that you left in the middle of the night and took a bus across the city."

"Yeah, I know. It was stupid," Julie admitted.

"We'll deal with it all tomorrow," I told her. "You should try to get some sleep."

Julie and I left the apartment around eight the next morning. She'd managed a little sleep on the couch and had eaten breakfast before we'd left. She didn't say anything as we drove through the city, but let out a heavy sigh as we pulled into her parents' driveway.

"I'm going to be in so much trouble," she said.

"Let's go face the music," I said, climbing out of the car.

We were halfway up the walk when the front door opened and Rachel walked out. Julie was tensed, ready to be yelled at, and was surprised when Rachel pulled her into a hug. Ron walked out behind them and put a hand on Julie's back. She turned to hug him and he kissed the top of her head. I followed them inside the house, where Tony sat in the living staring mindlessly at the television while Olivia was curled in a chair holding her cat, her eyes red from crying. Young Michael was chasing the family dog around and laughing, unaware of how his life would change in a few months' time.

We all sat down at the kitchen table, which was littered with remnants of breakfast.

"Honey, you shouldn't have left last night," Ron said. "If you wanted to see Ranger, you could have said something. We would have taken you."

Julie shrugged. "I didn't plan it."

"I'm sorry I yelled you last night," Ron said. "I just don't want you to give up Chesterton. You've worked so hard to get there."

"I know," Julie said. "We talked about it last night." She looked to me to finish the rest.

"I told Julie that I would fly her down here every weekend. She can leave after school Fridays and come back Sunday evenings. I can make sure someone is able to get her to and from the airport so you don't have to do it," I said. Rachel's expression was one of gratitude, but Ron's was frustrated.

"You don't need to do that," Ron said. "She doesn't need to see me like that."

"What about the other kids?" I asked. "They'll be here. They'll see you."

Rachel gave me a _that's what I've been saying_ look that Ron couldn't see.

Ron couldn't come up with a rebuttal. "That's a lot of money, and time spent travelling. She could be spending that time with her friends or doing homework."

"There are plenty of nonstop flights from Newark to Miami. She can do school work on the plane. She needs to spend this time with you, Ron. Her friends can wait."

Ron walked with me out to the car twenty minutes later. The family was spending the day together until Rachel's parents came over later in the afternoon.

"Thank you for doing this," Ron said. "You're right. She needs this."

"You both do," I said. "And I want you to tell me if there is anything else I can for you. I'm serious, Ron. And I want you to know that I'll always look for Rachel and the kids. You've been a terrific father to Julie, and I can't ever repay you for that, but I can try by making sure that your family is taken care of. I guess in an odd way, you all are my family too."

Ron reached out to shake my hand and his lips started to twitch before he burst into laughter. "Did you ever imagine that a one-night stand could lead to all of this?"

"Not for a second," I replied. "But I don't regret it."


	8. Chapter 8

" _ **I have to remind myself to breathe - almost to remind my heart to beat!" ~Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights.**_

 _December_

"Today's the day," Stephanie reminded me as we drove to work one morning in early December.

"Three o'clock. I remembered."

Stephanie was at the twenty-week mark in her pregnancy, and that meant she was due for her next—and likely last—ultrasound. We'd been told that we could find out the sex of the baby during it, and we'd agreed that it was something we wanted. Stephanie was too nosey and I was too much of a control freak to wait another twenty weeks to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Stephanie had been doing research online to see if there were signs that would indicate if a woman was having a boy or girl. Based on her research on old wives' tales and ancient rituals, Stephanie was convinced the baby was a boy. I was pretty sure it was a girl based on the simple fact that Manoso men had a history of producing a high rate of female children. My great-grandfather had been the only boy out of twelve children. He had gone on to produce six girls and two boys, but one of the boys had died at age four. My grandfather had six children with my father being the only boy. My brother had been the only one to produce a boy by our generation, and I suspected that wasn't going to change.

"Is our bet still on?"

"Of course."

The loser of the baby bet was responsible for dinner each night and the winner got to call the shots on sexual positions for the rest of the month. I was looking forward to being off of dinner duty, though I was usually the one to call the sexual positions so that wasn't much of a change.

Stephanie was uncomfortable with the way her body was changing, but I loved it. Her breasts were up a whole cup size, her ass was fuller, her hips were wider, and she had developed a noticeable belly over the last month. She currently wore all of her pants with that special band her sister had recommended and had said she was probably close to having to make the switch to the maternity clothes that Ella had specially ordered her for work. As self-conscious as she may have been over her body, I caught her stroking her belly absentmindedly as she worked or lay in bed at night. The first time she felt the baby move had scared her to death and had also started to make her feel awkward about sex, though her raging hormones always won out. I hadn't yet been able to feel the baby move. Anytime it had, Stephanie hadn't been able to get my hand to her belly in time.

My day was filled with meetings, most of which Stephanie was attending along with me. I never mentioned Stephanie's last name nor the fact that she was my wife in interviews. I didn't want anyone's opinion of either of us or our company to be impacted by the fact that we were married and worked together. Stephanie's pregnancy was to the point that she could still hide her belly by wearing a jacket, but I knew that eventually potential and current clients would see it and question her.

"How have things been going?" Dr Fuschetto asked us shortly after three as Stephanie lay on the exam table and I sat in a chair next to her.

"Pretty good, except I'm fat," Stephanie said.

"You aren't fat, but I would recommend you watch the weight gain," Dr Fuschetto said. "You've already gained twenty-five pounds in the first twenty weeks, and much of the weight gain takes place in the last trimester as the baby grows. I would prefer you only gain another ten pounds for the remainder of the pregnancy."

Stephanie glanced over at me and grimaced. We both knew that wasn't likely to happen.

"Are you finding out the sex of the baby?"

"Yes," Stephanie replied. "We have a bet wagered. I think it is a boy because I've done a bunch of those old wives' tales tests and they all point to boy. He thinks it's a girl because his family is full of women."

The doctor ran the ultrasound wand over Stephanie's belly and bought the profile of the baby into view. It better resembled a human being this time, though the grainy black-and-white picture still didn't tell me much. The doctor moved the wand around to different sides of Stephanie's belly to see it from different angles, stopping to take pictures or to zoom in and take measurements.

"Everything is looking great, Stephanie," she said. "You're still measuring right on track for the May fourth due date. May is very nice around here. Not too hot, but it will still be warm enough for this little lady to wear a dress home from the hospital."

I fought a smile at Stephanie's stunned reaction. "A girl? Are you sure? Can't those things be wrong?"

"I'm sure," Dr. Fuschetto said with a smile. "Little boys don't look like that."

"What do you win?" Dr Fuschetto asked me as she printed off a couple of sonogram photos and gave Stephanie a towel to clean her abdomen.

"She has to cook dinner for the whole month," I replied. "Which is almost more of a punishment."

We went straight home after the appointment. I wanted to get started on my reward.

"I can't believe we're having a girl," Stephanie said as we pulled in the driveway. "I was so sure it was a boy."

"You can't always be right," I replied, taking hold of her hand.

"I'm rarely right. You're the one who is always right."

"And I was right once again."

After a round of Stephanie-on-top sex, we fell asleep with me spooning her, rubbing my hand over her belly. I was glad we were having a girl. I'd meant everything I'd said to Stephanie about wanting to have another daughter. Torture, sex, and my aunt Ana's red velvet cake couldn't drag the confession out of me, but I was looking forward to the whole baby preparation process. I had missed out on all of that with Julie, and even if I hadn't been in the Army I doubted I would have been interested at the time. Stephanie and I had been looking at different houses and had recently placed a bid on one in Lawrence Township. The realtor had already told us she was certain the owners would accept it. It was four bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, with a stone fireplace that Stephanie had immediately loved. Silvia was already on commission to start redecorating, which would mainly consist of new flooring and paint, since the bones of the house were good. The kitchen and bathrooms were the only rooms that didn't need to be touched. I had contractors on standby to install impact glass for the numerous windows and the finished basement was undergoing reinforcement to allow it to be converted to a safe room if necessary. Stephanie thought I was going overboard, but I disagreed. My children would be living in that home. Julie had already been kidnapped, so I wasn't taking risks with this one.

"Have you thought of names?" Stephanie asked sleepily, interrupting my thoughts on the house.

"Not really. Have you?"

She rolled over and looked up at me. "I had an idea, but I'm not sure how you or your parents would feel about it."

I raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue.

"If you don't like it, just tell me. I won't be upset," she said. "But I was thinking of Eva Elizabeth. Eva after your twin sister, and Elizabeth is the English version of Isabella, after your grandmother. I thought Eva Isabella was too flowery."

I took a few minutes to consider the name. Eva's name had rarely been said in our family over the years. During the few times that my parents ever did talk about her, they tended to refer to her as _our daughter_ or _the baby._ I liked the name, and it would be nice to bring some positivity to it.

"I like it, but I think we should run it by my parents. Just in case it would bother them," I said.

"That's what I had been thinking," she said. "And if they aren't comfortable with it, we will come up with a different first name. But I'd like to keep either Elizabeth or Isabella as one of the names. I love your Grandma Bella."

So did I.

We had agreed to wait until after New Years to ask my parents' about the baby name. We were having Christmas dinner with them on the twenty-fourth, dinner with the Plums on the twenty-fifth, and we were leaving for Miami on the twenty-sixth. We would be staying there on a brief vacation before helping get Julie up to Jersey on January second. She was due to start school at Chesterton Academy on the fourth. Since our last trip to Miami, Ron's condition had declined. He now had to use a cane to walk and his left arm was mostly useless. His temper outbursts were becoming more frequent and he had begun experiencing lapses in his memory. But according to Julie and Rachel, if he was sitting down and it was a good day, it was easy to forget he was sick. The tumor wasn't growing as fast as expected, so it looked like Ron may have a month or two more than originally anticipated.

Our plans on the baby name were thwarted before everyone had even filled their plates at Christmas dinner.

"Do you have a name picked out yet for our newest granddaughter?" my mother asked as she handed Stephanie a bowl of potatoes.

"Um, we've been talking about it," Stephanie said slowly, giving her full concentration to scooping out the potatoes.

"Did you have any contenders at this point?" Celia asked. "I miss having babies and picking out names."

Stephanie caught my eye and gave a small shrug. She didn't seem to think we were going to be able to avoid the topic.

"A couple," I said casually.

"Why are you being so tight-lipped about it?" my mother pressed on. "Are you wanting to name her after someone in Stephanie's family and you're worried it might upset us?"

I sighed and put my fork down. "No, I'm worried it might upset you because we want to name her after someone in this family."

That brought all activity to a halt at the table. Everyone was confused, looking to all of the women at the table. Sofia gasped after a second. "Are you naming her after Grandma Rosa?"

Stephanie squeezed my hand under the table in a _just get it over with_ gesture.

"No. We were wanting to wait until after the first of the year to talk to you and Dad about it. We were thinking of naming the baby after Eva," I said, looking at my mother.

I couldn't recall ever seeing my mother looked so shocked at something. The table was silent and no one seemed to want to make any sudden movements, though I did see Celia put her head in her hands. Eva's death had hit her hard. She has been the oldest of us, seven at the time, and had the best recollection and the most emotional attachment to the situation after my parents.

I slide my gaze over to my father, who was watching my mother. I knew he would go along with whatever she said. Tears started falling down my mother's cheeks and she pressed a hand to her mouth. I had wondered if it would be too much for her.

"If it's not something you can handle, we will find another name," Stephanie said. "We won't be hurt."

My mother reached over and held one of Stephanie's hands. "I want you to name her Eva," she said, wiping away some of her tears. "I want a reason to feel happy when I say that name. I want to see a little girl named Eva Manoso to grow up. I want you two to be able to have all of the things with your own Eva that we didn't get with ours."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"I'm sure."

"You're killing me," Celia said, wiping her own tears away. "That's so sweet."

"Are you using the same middle name?" Sofia asked, her own eyes a little bright.

"We're going with Elizabeth. It's the English version of Isabella, after Grandma."

"Oh, she will love that," my mother said smiling. "You've always been her favorite."

My siblings all scoffed at the idea, but my mother waved them away. "You're adults now, you can handle the truth."

Everyone laughed, the mood becoming lighter again. I squeezed Stephanie's leg under the table and rubbed a hand against her belly for a second. I was relieved to have gotten it over with, and I could tell Stephanie was as well.

"Anything else you think we are ready to know now that we are all adults?" Emilio asked. I knew he was attempting to lighten the mood. He had also been old enough to remember Eva, and I knew the experience had turned him into the family comedian.

"Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy aren't real," my father replied. "I used to sneak out of the house when I was a kid, and your mother has a fake tooth that got knocked out by a patient on her first night as a nurse."

My mother looked to my father and asked "Should we tell them our secret?"

He looked shocked and mildly embarrassed. "Do you really want to?"

My mother shrugged. "I feel a bad about lying for all of these years. Especially after they gave us that cruise for our anniversary a few of years ago."

My father picked up his wine glass and took a long sip. "I'll let you handle it."

Celia and I caught each other's eye. What had they been keeping from us? We were a pretty open family, with myself being the exception. But I had gotten better in the last few years.

"Your father and I didn't have our forty-fourth anniversary this past July," my mother began. "It was only our forty-third."

There were a couple of beats of silence while everyone did the math. I couldn't believe it. Not that my parents had apparently lied about the year they had gotten married, but the fact that I hadn't known about it. I tended to know everything about everyone.

"But I'm turning forty-three in a few weeks," Celia said, looking confused. I could see the realization hit her like a truck. "Oh my God, I was a shot-gun wedding baby!"

Emilio burst out laughing. "Now we know where Carlos got his influence. It was in his DNA the whole time."

My mother bit her bottom lip. "We were already engaged and had been planning to get married that following spring. We just had to move it up a few months when we found out I was pregnant."

Emilio shook his head in mock disappointment. "And here the rest of your children remained _virgins_ until our wedding nights. And I'm sure Carlos remained celibate after his divorce until he married Stephanie. All because we wanted to emulate our _sainted_ parents."

The entire table burst out laughing. "If anyone could actually believe that Carlos Manoso has only ever been with two women, then let me know. I have some property on Mars to sell them," Silvia said from the other end of the table.

"Why am I getting picked on?" I asked. "I'm not the one who screwed an entire sports team in one night."

My mother gasped out loud. "What?! Did one of you _actually_ do that?"

We all avoided eye contact, but Emilio coughed _"Silvia."_

"You fucking rat," Silvia said, throwing her napkin at him. "Same goes for you, Carlos. At least I never screwed anyone in a church."

Both of my parents gasped and made the sign of the cross. "How did you even know about that?" I asked Silvia.

"Oh my God, it's true!" my mother moaned.

"Did you forget that our cousin Louisa was friends with Angie Longoria? Angie told Louisa how you nailed her in the Sunday school room during Mass. She had been so excited to tell Louisa because she said you'd both been virgins. Louisa told me because she was shocked that you were still a virgin at fifteen. She'd figured you had lost it earlier than that."

Apparently I had forgotten that, and hadn't considered that Angie might tell her. I shrugged. "That was over twenty years ago. I've slept since then."

"Yeah, and probably with half the women along the eastern seaboard," Emilio said with a grin. "There's a reason why they say Army Rangers get dogs pregnant."

"Watch who you're calling a dog," Stephanie quipped.

"I can't handle this," my mother said weakly. "I preferred to think at least one of you may have stayed a virgin until you got married. I've definitely not wanted to consider how many women you boys have been with."

"Actually, I think Silvia probably has me beat in that area," Emilio said.

My mother drained her wine before going over to the liquor cabinet and pulling out two glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels. She poured a substantial amount in each glass and carried one of them over to my father.

"Okay, if you are going to start telling us numbers, now is the time," my father said, knocking back half of his drink. "It won't feel so bad."

We all looked at each other for a minute, questioning whether or now we were really going to have this conversation with our parents.

"Four," Celia said quickly, and I saw a small blush creep across her face. Andres put an arm around her shoulders.

"And here I thought I was the only one," he said with a wink.

"Your turn, Andres," Sofia said. "In-laws are included as well."

"Oh crap," I heard Stephanie mutter.

"Six," Andres said, not looking at all ashamed.

"Ten," Sofia admitted, not looking at my parents. "Most of that during my modeling days."

"Nine," Sofia's husband Tony said.

"Two," Lucy said, looking disappointed that her number wasn't higher.

"Fifteen," Emilio said with a satisfied smirk.

"Seven," Sivlia's husband Caleb said, looking mortified. I imagined he would refuse Christmas dinner with the family next year.

Silvia took a breath like she was getting ready to dive into deep water. "Thirty-two," she said as she let the breath out.

"Holy shit," my father groaned. My mother had finished her drink and was pouring another one. "Pass that to your father," she told my sister, handing her the bottle.

"Three," Aurelia said quietly. We were all a little surprised by that one. If anyone would have remained a virgin, it would have been her.

John, Aurelia's husband, didn't look up from his phone as he spoke. "Four."

Everyone looked expectantly at me. I found my mouth dry as I went to speak. "I don't think Mom and Dad really want to hear my number."

"Let's just get it over with," my mother replied. "I can handle it."

I could tell Stephanie was making an enormous effort not to laugh.

"Eighty-five," I muttered. My father actually looked impressed, but I thought my mother was going to have a stroke.

"That's more than all of your siblings combined!" she cried. "Where did find that many women?"

"I've travelled a lot," I said with a shrug. "Women liked the Army uniform. But if it makes you feel any better, the only woman I've been with in the last seven years has been Stephanie."

My mother put her head in her hands.

"And speaking of Stephanie," Emilio said. "What's the magic number, Steph?"

Stephanie squeezed her eyes shut. "Seven."

My mother was completely silent for several minutes after she finished her second glass. "How did we get here? How did this topic of conversation even start?"

"You told us Carlos was Grandma Bella's favorite grandchild," Sofia said.

"Karma's a bitch," my mother muttered.

Stephanie and I left early, deciding not to stay for midnight Mass. My mother had gone to lay down after dinner, needing to sleep off some of the Jack Daniels and probably to pray for my eternal soul.

"I can't believe the turn that conversation took," Stephanie said as we drove home. "I guess any trauma your parents might have been feeling over us naming the baby after your sister was overshadowed by your whoring."

" _My_ whoring? Didn't you hear Silvia's and Emilio's numbers?"

"Your number is really high," she said. "Especially considering you racked up that number by twenty-nine. And yet I still let you get in my pants. Even father my child. What does that say about me?"

"If you average it out, it's about six women a year. That's not terrible."

I was pretty sure Stephanie rolled her eyes.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

"Happy Anniversary," Stephanie said to me on New Year's Eve. I opened my eyes to find bright morning sunlight streaming into the apartment. I gave her a kiss and started trying to get her out of her clothes.

"The baby is really active this morning," she said, pulling her shirt back down.

"And?"

"And it's weird to have sex when she is moving around. All I can think about how your penis is inches away from her. And what happens to your sperm? Does just swim around in there and tap on the amniotic sac trying to figure out how to get in?"

I stared at her for a minute, amazed at the way her brain worked. "Babe, do you not remember basic sex education? Or that section in your book about sex during pregnancy?"

She started to speak, but then seemed to interrupt herself. "How do you know about that section in the book?"

I kept my expression neutral. "You told me about it."

She shook her head. "No, I didn't. I haven't read it yet because I was afraid I'd read something that I didn't want to know and wouldn't want to have sex." A wide, surprised smile spread across her face. "You've been reading my book?"

I let out a defeated sigh and fell back against my pillow. "Sometimes while you are in the shower," I said, staring at the ceiling. "If I had a question about something."

"So what did you learn about sex during pregnancy?" Stephanie asked, leaning over me and still smiling.

"That semen doesn't get past your cervix. Your body sets it up to help prevent infection reaching the baby."

"That's good," she said. "But isn't it weird that you can feel her?"

"Not really," I said. "She wouldn't be in there if it weren't for us having sex."

I sat up, lifted Stephanie's shirt up over her head and started working on her underwear. "Relax," I said. I rolled her on top of me so that I could have a full view of her body.

"Why do you want me on top so much these days?" she asked as she lowered herself onto me.

"Because I get to see your body the best," I said. "Plus I can't be on top anymore."

Stephanie held onto her belly with one hand as she rode me. I ran my hands over her breasts and down her sides, resting them on her hips.

"This position is getting harder for me each time," she said, shifting uncomfortably.

"Then we'll use a different one," I said, moving her off of me. I moved behind her resting on my knees, pulled her up onto her own, and spread her legs wide enough to sit her on my lap with her back to me. I could help support her belly with one hand while using the other to explore her body as we moved.

"I really liked that position," Stephanie said as we laid together afterwards. "It was more comfortable and hit some really good spots. We need to use that one even when I'm not pregnant."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

We had agreed to not get each other gifts for our anniversary this year since we were buying a house and having a baby. The baby was Stephanie's gift to me and the house was my gift to her. We spent the day out of the building. We had lunch at one of her favorite restaurants and went to the beach for a few hours. She had initially bought a bikini, but after realizing how uncomfortable she felt being that exposed, had bought a short dress to cover her belly.

"I think Eva wants to get some sun," I said, trying to push the dress up to expose her belly. She pushed it back down and slapped at my hand.

"No, she doesn't. She's modest. She wants to stay covered up."

"She's a Jersey girl, she isn't modest."

"She's a Burg girl. She has _some_ modesty."

"She's a half-Burg, half-Cuban girl who will be growing up in Lawrence Township," I replied, then paused. "I have no idea what that will mean."

"Well, whatever it means I'm still keeping covered up," Stephanie said. "It seems like you want to see me naked more often now than before I was pregnant."

I shrugged. "I do. I love pregnant women's bodies. Especially the ones I get to have sex with."

Stephanie turned to look at me and lowered her sunglasses. "Just how many pregnant women have you had sex with?"

"Besides you and Rachel? Two others."

Stephanie was flabbergasted. "What? Why?"

"One was in Afghanistan. Her husband was a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader. He was a cruel man and she was one of several wives, but she was his favorite. I got her in bed, took care of her hormonal urges, promised to keep her and her baby safe, and she told me where to find her husband. We captured him, I helped get her to a safe place, and she thanked me with a pretty good night of sex," I said, trying not to smile at the memory. "The other one was a bartender in Newark. I'd gone out drinking with some friends one night a few months before I met you. I started talking to her, found out her boyfriend had left her when she got pregnant, and made my move."

Stephanie shook her head. "I don't know what to think."

"Why not be thankful I enjoy sex with you while you're pregnant? I've known a few men who wouldn't touch their wives or girlfriend once they found out."

"That would kill me," she agreed. "These hormones drive me crazy sometimes."

We headed over to Rachel's and Ron's on the second to load up the car with Julie's belongings. She wasn't bringing much with her, as she had to buy a winter wardrobe in Trenton. The biggest baggage was emotional.

"It'll be okay," Rachel said, hugging Julie as we prepared to leave. "You'll be back down for your first visit soon."

Rachel and Ron had said they didn't want Julie to come down to Florida during the first two weekends of school, not wanting to overextend her when she needed to get used to a routine. She hadn't been happy about it, but had stopped complaining when Ron had snapped at her. She went to hug her father and he wrapped his good arm around her.

"You'll see me soon enough," he said. "You're supposed to Skype with us when you get there tonight."

"It isn't the same," Julie said, her voice muffled into Ron's shirt.

"I know," he said. "But you need to get up to school. I want to see you get started there."

I loaded Julie's suitcases into the car with Rachel while Ron stood on the porch talking to Stephanie.

"He wants to try to come up to see her in a couple of weeks," she said quietly. "He would rather her not have to leave to come down to see him when she's first starting school. I'll let you know if we think we'll make it. But don't tell Julie. She wouldn't want him to fly."

"I won't say anything," I promised. "It's going to be hard on her. Him too, I imagine."

Rachel nodded and fought a sob. "It feels like a bad dream. I keep wondering when I'm going to wake up."

I put an arm around her. "Is there anything I can do?"

She shook her head. "You're doing so much already. I don't think there is anything else, unless you can find a cure."

I hadn't told anyone, not even Stephanie, but I had accessed Ron's medical file and had sent his tests and scans to every prominent oncologist and neurologist in the world in an attempt to find out if there was anything else to be done to save him. They had all given me the same answer. No.

I saw Stephanie put a white envelope in her purse and give Ron a hug before we all loaded into the car and headed to the airport. One of my men from the Miami office was driving. I was in the front seat with him and Stephanie was in back with Julie, who was tearful and silent the entire drive. She didn't speak until we were on the plane and headed back to Jersey.

"When do you close on the new house?" she asked.

"Next week," I said. "We get immediately possession, but the contractors will take a few weeks to get everything done. We still have to finalize some of the decorating plans with Silvia, which includes you deciding what you want done to your bedroom."

"Really?" she asked.

"It's your room," I said. "You should have the stuff you like in it."

"What about the baby's room?" she asked. "What color are you doing it in?"

"Purple," Stephanie said. "Neither of us really like pink, and Silvia's initial idea made up both cringe when it was in pink, but it looks a lot better in purple."

After Julie put her headphones in and started listening to music on her iPad while looking at decorating ideas, I quietly asked Stephanie what was the in the envelope I'd see her with.

"It's nothing," she said. I reached down for her bag, but she caught my hand.

"Can you trust me, please?" she asked. "It's nothing bad, I promise."

My instinct ran in the direction of looking at it later after she had gone to sleep, but I knew I shouldn't. If the tables were turned, and I had asked Stephanie to trust me and not look at something, she would respect it. I trusted Stephanie completely, but occasionally my actions wouldn't match it.

"Okay," I said, taking her hand and leaving it alone. We had enough to be dealing with in our life in the next few months. I didn't want to cause a fight on top of the stress of getting Julie into school and getting moved into a new house. I would have to be content with not knowing something.

 _A/N: Just an aside, Eva is pronounced with the Spanish pronunciation (A-vuh)._


	9. Chapter 9

_**I don't know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.**_

 __ _ **Nicholas Sparks**_

To say that the first three weeks of January were busy would be an understatement. And to say they were unemotional would be a bold-faced lie.

Rangeman's contract to provide security to Chesterton Academy had started January first and there had been no issue finding staff to work at the school. The weekday shifts at Chesterton were eight-and-a-half hour shifts that overlapped for a half-hour in order to allow for reports. It was popular with the married men with families. The weekend shifts were twelve hours each and were popular with the younger, part-time employees. We had spent the month of December reviewing the campus and making plans for updating the security system, completing the physical work while the students and staff were away on winter break. Even though the Chesterton job was managed by the Trenton branch, I had appointed Bobby Brown as the Chesterton manager in order to avoid adding more work to Stephanie's plate. He would only involve her if there were an issue. Brown would also be serving as Julie's transportation to and from school each day. She hadn't been happy with the idea in the beginning, but upon meeting Brown had immediately changed her attitude. Stephanie told me it was because Brown was hot. I preferred to believe Julie had come to understand my point that public transportation was inconvenient and unsafe for a teenage girl.

Julie was trying to get settled into her new school, but was finding it overwhelming. The school work was challenging, but not too difficult. Her only complaint was the sheer volume of it. Trying to find a social group to fit into had also been difficult because she was dealing with people who had all known each other since the sixth grade and the overwhelming majority were from wealthy families, but after the first few days she had managed to make a couple of friends. The most difficult part was being away from her family. She would Skype with them every few days, and she was emotional and distant after each contact. She hadn't been happy about not being able to go home for the first two weeks of school, and I hadn't made any plans for the third week because Rachel and Ron were planning to surprise her for a long weekend. According to Julie, Ron's condition had declined even in the short time since she had left Miami. His speech was becoming increasingly slurred and he had made the decision to use a wheelchair outside of the house. He was also experiencing more memory lapses.

I found Julie sitting at the kitchen table late one night after her Skype call with Ron and Rachel. She had been away from them for two weeks and was getting upset because there were no definitive plans to go down to Miami for the upcoming weekend. I had heard Rachel tell Julie that it was only Saturday night and that she was sure the plans would be worked out by the time she got out of school on Friday. Rachel and Ron's flight was due in on Thursday evening and they were going to come to dinner at our house before going to stay in my old apartment at Rangeman while in town. Julie had started to cry after she had disconnected the call.

"Are you okay?" I asked as I took a bottled water from the refrigerator. Julie shook her head and didn't seem to be able to stop it.

"He forgot my name," she said after a minute of head-shaking. "He knew I was his daughter, but couldn't remember my name. Mom had to remind him. He was so embarrassed."

"I know it hurts," I told her as I started brewing a cup of the passion tea that Stephanie had come to crave during her pregnancy. "And it's only going to get worse. Just do what you can to enjoy the good moments with him."

Julie was quiet while the Keurig brewed and poured the hot, pink liquid into a mug. I was about to carry the water and the tea back up to the bedroom when Julie spoke.

"This is your fault."

I stopped and turned around to find her glaring at me, tears falling down her face.

"If you would have bothered to stick around and be an _actual_ father, I would have never gotten close to him," she said, her tone getting louder and angrier with every word. "I wouldn't be Julie Martine, I'd be Julie Manoso, and he'd just be my stepdad Ron. I'd hate him and tell him he wasn't my dad and that I didn't have to listen to him because my _real_ dad told me what to do. But instead you couldn't wait to get rid of me. You passed me off the first chance you got because all you cared about was becoming some badass millionaire, and the _mistake_ kid you had with a one-night stand got in the way of that."

Julie stood up and slammed her computer shut. "So it's your fault I hurt," she yelled, tucking the computer under her arm. "It's your fault that I'm hurting because he's dying. If he'd just been a regular stepfather to me, I would have been sad. I wouldn't have felt like this. And he hurts because he knows I'm hurting. He's trying to be so strong because he doesn't want me to cry. And all you can say is 'I know it hurts'. Well fuck you. I wish you were the one dying instead. At least it wouldn't hurt this much."

She hurried up the stairs past Stephanie, who had been walking down. I heard the door slam seconds later. I stood in the kitchen for a minute collecting my thoughts, closing my eyes when I felt Stephanie wrap her arms around my waist.

"She's just hurting," she said quietly. "She didn't mean that."

"I get it," I said. "If I hadn't given her up, she may not have become as close to him, though I don't think she would have hated him. It's ironic that part of the reason I allowed Ron to adopt her was because I thought _I_ would be the one more likely to die when she was young. I had wanted to spare her that experience."

"You couldn't have predicted this," Stephanie replied, stepping around to face me. "You've told me before that you've never regretted the decision to let Ron adopt her. You said he has been a good father to her, that's she has been happy, and that those were the most important things."

I knew that was all true, but in that moment I was having a small moment of regret. I could have maintained my rights and been in and out of her life, which would have confused and hurt her. But instead she had thirteen good years with Ron, only to have him ripped out of her life at a significant point. Which scenario was more painful?

"I'll just give her some space," I said, handing Stephanie her mug of tea. "And I'll hope that she starts feeling better once she gets to see them this weekend."

I knew I was shutting down on Stephanie, but I couldn't quite face my feelings on the issue at the moment. Having your child tell you that she wished you were the one dying instead of the man who had raised her was harder than I could have imagined, not that I would have ever considered the current circumstances when Julie was younger.

I left for work early on Sunday morning, making sure I was out the door before Julie got up. I had stopped working on Sundays after Stephanie and I had gotten married, only doing so if there was a problem or I was on-call to cover for anyone who called off. I didn't like to admit it, but I enjoyed the time off. Stephanie and I usually stayed in bed most of the morning before eating a late breakfast and spending the day together. I hated to leave Stephanie with Julie, but I knew I couldn't face her. I felt like a coward, but I hoped Stephanie would be understanding.

I had been working hard at my desk all morning when the phone rang.

"Eddie Gazzara on line one," said the weekend staff. I picked up the phone, wondering why he would be calling me at the office on the weekend.

"Hey, Ranger," Gazzara said with a sigh. "I lost the straw poll on who had to make the call to you about this, so don't shoot the messenger. Stephanie has been arrested for assaulting a police officer."

I was silent for a beat. "What happened?"

"I'm still reading over the witness statements, but from what I'm reading Stephanie was in a heated discussion with the officer, who the witnesses all say was antagonizing her and making her cry. When he proceeded to make some disparaging remarks about you, she kicked him in the balls. Pretty impressive for a woman who is six months pregnant. But we are trying to get him to drop the charges. We haven't processed her yet, and we aren't putting her back in the cages. There are at least two women back there that Steph dragged back to jail during her BEA days. I'm not going to put her at risk like that."

I felt the blood start pulsing through my veins. "Who was the officer involved?"

Gazzara was silent for thirty seconds. "Joe Morelli."

I tried to keep my blood pressure at a healthy rate, but it wasn't working out for me. "I'm coming down there, and Morelli had better not be anywhere that I can see or reach him."

"We aren't that stupid around here," he said and hung up.

It took me fifteen minutes to get to the municipal building. I took the time to plot Morelli's torture and ultimate death. I'd decided to make him disappear without a trace, since I would likely be a suspect in his death. But not before I'd made him suffer for making my wife cry and then arresting her when she gave him what he had deserved.

"Morelli isn't pressing charges," Gazzara told me as I walked into the building. He had been waiting for me by the door. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, meaning he had come in on his day off. "We are just getting Stephanie's stuff back to her and she can leave."

"Thanks," I said, looking over his shoulder to see Stephanie walking towards me. She was dressed in a form-fitting long-sleeved green t-shirt and jeans. She had her black messenger back hanging from one shoulder and her black winter coat draped over one arm. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her face was pale.

"Thanks, Eddie," she said, giving Gazzara a hug. "I appreciate your help."

"It was probably only a matter of time," Gazzara said. "But he was the one in the wrong. He got what he deserved."

We walked out to the Turbo and neither of us spoke until we were safely enclosed in the car.

"What happened?" I asked Stephanie as she tried to find a comfortable position in the car.

"I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things this morning and ran into Morelli," she said. "I was surprised to see him there since he lives in Camden and I haven't seen him for three years. He looked surprised to see me too, but then he saw that I was pregnant and he was shocked. It took him a minute to recover and I tried to ask him about his wife and their son, but he didn't want to talk about them. He just made some smartass remark about you forgetting a condom."

Stephanie started to sniffle and I stroked her hair. "You don't have to tell me right now, babe. I don't want you to get upset."

She shook her head. "I want to get this over with. Anyway, I told him that we had planned this baby, and he got pissed off. He said it was 'so fucking amazing' that I could manage to not only live with you, but get married and intentionally get pregnant. He talked about how I would practically break out into hives whenever he would even hint at any of those things. Then he went on to say he couldn't imagine you as a family man. He asked me why I thought you would stick around for this baby when you didn't stick around for Julie. He said he gave it two weeks after the baby is born before you've packed up and moved on and that you'd be waiting for me to get remarried so someone else could take over your responsibility."

Stephanie was crying in earnest now and I pulled her into a hug. "That's when I kicked him in the balls," she said.

"I'm impressed with your restraint," I told her. My own restraint was barely holding on. I was ready to start looking for Morelli. This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that my decision to let Ron adopt Julie was being criticized. Julie was allowed to have an opinion on the matter. The man who used to put his dick in my wife was not.

"I'll have someone pick up your car," I told her. "I'll take you home."

"Do you have to go back to work?" she asked. "Can't you stay home with me?"

I didn't speak until I had pulled out of the parking lot. "I'm not going to go back to work. I'm going to find Morelli."

I felt Stephanie's hand on my leg. "Ranger, please don't. I just want to put this behind me. Please stay with me. I just want to lay on the couch with you and watch television while you stroke my hair and tell me I don't look six months pregnant."

I didn't comment as I continued the drive to the house, but Stephanie kept up a running dialogue about why I shouldn't go after Morelli ranging from the moral ramifications to Bob being sad if his current dad killed his old one to Eva wanting to have me there when she was born and not on the run or in a prison cell. By the time I pulled into the driveway behind our house, she had convinced me not to go.

"Thank you," she said, leaning over to kiss me. "I know this is really hard for you, and the only reason you're not going after him is because you love me more than you hate him."

I'd made myself truly relax with Stephanie that afternoon. Julie had stayed hidden in her room all day, so it was a little easier to pretend that this was just a normal Sunday with my wife. We had been laying on the couch watching _Independence Day_ and were about halfway through the movie when Julie came downstairs. She had glanced in our direction, but had avoided eye contact with me as she made her way into the kitchen. I heard the microwave running and drawers opening and closing as I continued to tell myself not to let her words get to me. I didn't think she had meant them, but they still made me feel guilty. She had been at the bottom of the stairs when there was a knock on the front door. She walked over and opened it.

"Is Stephanie here?"

I immediately tensed and Stephanie lifted her head off my chest. Julie said that she was and let Morelli insides. I needed to have a talk with her about security. Whenever she was talking to me again.

Morelli came into the living room and froze at the sight of Stephanie and me laying on the couch. He tried to relax and act nonchalant, but I knew it bothered him to see me in such an intimate position with her.

"The one time when I don't have a gun within my reach," I said as Stephanie sat up.

Bob had come running into the room upon hearing Morelli's voice and had jumped up on him, putting his front paws on Morelli's chest and sniffing him.

"Hey, Bob," Morelli said, patting the dog.

Bob got back down on to the floor and looked back at me before looking at back at Morelli. He was confused about his allegiance. Morelli used to feed him meatball subs and let him destroy the house, but Morelli had also ditched him for a woman. Bob continued to look torn for a few seconds before running to hide in the kitchen.

"Pussy," I muttered as I stood up. "Give me a reason not to beat you unconscious, Morelli."

"Ranger, please," Stephanie said, standing up and putting a hand on my chest.

"I came to apologize," Morelli said. "And to try to explain why I flipped out this morning."

"There's no justification for it," I said.

"Let's hear him out," Stephanie said. "Sit down, Joe."

Morelli sat in one of the chairs. "I don't know how much you've heard about me since the last time I was here, but Melissa and I have been married for two-and-a-half- years now. Our son was born a couple of months after we got married, and we just had a girl two months ago. I'd thought things were going well until the other day. Melissa is still on maternity leave and got a call that her partner, Paul, was seriously injured in the line of duty. She was understandably upset. We are friends with him and his wife, Lacy. They have three kids. A few hours after we got the call she came to me to confess that she and Paul have been sleeping together since just a few months after we started dating. To add insult to injury, she said she has never been sure who fathered our children."

Morelli looked like a man who wanted to eat a bullet. "It looks like Paul is going to make it, and Melissa is saying she wants to find out who the children's biological father is. She admitted that she has tried to get him to leave his wife in the past, but he won't because he doesn't want to break up his family. I think she is hoping that if the children are his that he'll leave Lacy, or Lacy will leave him once Melissa makes the information known. I'm afraid if they aren't mine that she will try to have them taken away from me. I love my kids, and I don't want to lose them."

"I'm sorry, Joe," Stephanie said quietly. "That sounds terrible."

Morelli nodded. "That's why I'm in town for a few days. I needed to clear my head and figure out what I'm going to do next. But it didn't give me an excuse to yell at you or to say what I did. I had told my mother a while ago that I didn't want to hear about you anymore, so I didn't know that you'd gotten married or that you were pregnant. It surprised me. I'm not sure which of you I'm more surprised about with this. But it brought up old stuff for me during a really shitty time in my life and I took it out on you. I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Stephanie said, squeezing my hand to make sure I knew that she was forgiving him. That meant she wanted me to put away my revenge plans. I walked Morelli to the door and followed him out onto the step.

"I'm glad you came by to apologize to her," I said. "But if you even look at her the wrong way ever again, I'll kill you slowly and no one will ever find your body. She isn't your on-again, off-again girlfriend anymore. She's my wife, and she's having my child. Keep to your side of the line."

"Understood," he said and I waited until he had driven off to go back inside.

"Wow," Stephanie said once I sat back down on the couch. "That's a lot to be dealing with right now."

"It still doesn't give him the right to be a dick."

"But he has apologized, and I'm sure you just threatened him with bodily harm if he even looks at me funny so I think it is behind us," she replied.

At least one thing was behind us.

I spent the rest of the week remaining out of Julie's sight. As far as I knew, she hadn't spoken a word to either me or Stephanie since Saturday night. Being sixteen, she was self-sufficient enough to get herself meals and get ready for school. Since we didn't drive her, we didn't have commute time for conversation to take place. There was also the fact that I was going into work early and staying later than usual. Stephanie had tried to get me to talk to Julie, but I hadn't wanted to take that step yet. I thought she needed to be able to spend time with her father first before we tried to talk things out. What I would have preferred was that things would slowly get back to normal without having to talk about what had happened. I'd rather just move on.

I came home earlier on Thursday night because Rachel and Ron were due to show up for dinner at six. They had arrived at the Rangeman building shortly after four and Ella had helped them get settled into the apartment. Neither Rachel nor Ron gave any indication that they knew there had been an issue between Julie and me, so I didn't share the information with them. Stephanie had made sure to tell Julie that she needed to come down for dinner since we were having people over. Julie had quietly set the table, carefully avoiding me as we inhabited the same airspace. The doorbell rang at five minutes to six and Stephanie sent Julie to answer. I heard Julie's surprised voice as she greeted her parents. Ron had left his wheelchair back at the apartment and was just using his cane.

"I can't believe you guys came," she said.

"I miss you, and I know you miss me, so I wanted to come up to see you. You have so much going on with school that I don't want you to have to waste time on a plane," Ron said.

Julie followed her parents into the kitchen, making eye contact with me for the first time since Saturday night.

I was grateful for Stephanie's, Julie's and Rachel's social skills, as it kept conversation going throughout dinner. I noticed Ron having difficulty with getting the fork to his mouth each time and that he seemed to be having some difficulty swallowing the tougher foods. I knew Julie was seeing it too, but she was trying not to think about it. Anytime Ron had a problem, he would immediately ask Julie a question or make a comment in order to take attention off of him.

"I know the other kids miss you," Ron said as we finished our meals. "Especially—especially, um, your sister." He glanced over at Rachel.

"Olivia," she reminded him. Ron smiled and tried to act like he hadn't forgotten.

"Right, Olivia misses you. But don't tell her I told you. She'll just deny it," he said with a smile. He moved the conversation on to update Julie on Tony's basketball skills and her Grandma Martine's new car. As he spoke animatedly about how his mother had been trying to learn the technology in the car, I started to feel like I was suffocating. Ron was doing what a good father was supposed to do, which was to make his child feel comfortable, even in a terrible situation. In the five days since she had yelled at me, all I had done was avoid her. It made me wonder if I would ever be able to be as good of a father to my children as Ron was to his.

"I need to get back to the office for a while," I said as I stood up. "I'll check on you before I leave the building tonight to make sure you have everything you need."

I patted Ron on the shoulder as I walked around the table to give Stephanie a kiss. She gave me a look that told me she thought I should stay, but I just couldn't manage it. I went upstairs to get my laptop and as I was coming back down the stairs I heard Rachel say "Julie, what's wrong?" It was followed by the sound of sobbing. I paused on the stairs, not wanting to interrupt the moment.

"What is it, Julie?" Ron asked.

"I'm a terrible person," she wailed. "I said some really horrible things to Ranger over the weekend and he's been avoiding me. He doesn't want to be in the same room with me."

"He's just trying to give you space," Stephanie said. "He knows you're hurting, and I think he doesn't know how to help you."

"What did you say to him?" Ron asked, his tone both surprised and confused.

"I said that he had cared more about getting rich than being a father to me and that he gave up his rights so that he didn't have to deal with me. I said that if he had stuck around to be my father that I wouldn't have gotten close to you," she said to Ron through sobs. "I said I wouldn't hurt this much to see you sick. And then—and then I said that I wished he was the one dying instead because it wouldn't hurt so much." Julie broke down into sobs again, and I made the decision to finally face the problem.

I walked into the kitchen to find Rachel and Stephanie sitting on either side of Julie. Julie saw me come back into the room and immediately stood up and walked over to me. She threw her arms around me and began crying again.

"I'm so sorry for what I said," she said, her voice muffled in my shirt.

"It's okay, Julie," I said as I stroked her hair.

She leaned back to look up at me. "I didn't mean it."

"I know. It's okay," I said again.

Ron slammed his good fist down so hard on the table that it made the silverware clatter and every jump.

"No, it isn't okay!" he yelled. I could tell he was upset and he didn't have control over his emotions at the moment. "He's your father, Julie. You don't get to talk to him like that."

"Ron," Rachel began, but he cut her off.

"Don't start, Rachel," Ron snapped. "She got this from you. You didn't treat him well when she was little anyway. I was the one who got you to be nicer to him and include him in her life more."

I could see Rachel's eyes well up with tears. Stephanie put an arm around her.

"Ron, come with me," I said, walking towards him. He needed to calm down, and I didn't want him to start saying more things he would regret.

"No, I'm not finished," he said. "You were raised better than this, Julie. You were taught to respect your parents. All of them. He let you come live with him so that you could go to school up here and not have to live in the residence. He pays the tuition to that school. That's the only reason you can attend. Did you know that? Because he pays so much money to us in child support, we can afford to send you there. And this is how you repay him, by acting like a spoiled little brat?"

"Ron," I said more firmly. "Let's go."

I helped him up from the chair, handed him his cane, grabbed his coat, and we walked out to the front step. We didn't speak until we were outside.

"I can't believe she said that to you," he said angrily. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't want you to know," I said. "She's hurting, and I knew she didn't mean it. I wanted to give her some space and some time with you this weekend. People lash out when they hurt. I was just the person there when it happened."

"You should have grounded her, or punished her in some way," Ron snapped. "Or if you didn't have the guts to do it then you should have told me so I could do it."

"Her father is dying," I said bluntly. "I'm not going to punish her for her pain."

"YOU'RE HER FUCKING FATHER TOO!" Ron yelled. "Why is that so hard for everyone to understand?"

"Because it isn't the same thing," I said. "You are the man who raised her. You looked under the bed for monsters, taught her how to ride her bike, took her to Disney World, and coached her soccer team. You raised her to know right from wrong. Until a few years ago, I was just the guy who showed up to see her a few times a year and sent birthday and Christmas gifts. She didn't really know me. She still doesn't know me very well. I'm getting to be a father to her after she is nearly grown. It's different than what you have with her."

"But you're going to be the only father she has left soon," he said, and I could tell he was trying to keep it together.

"I can't replace you, Ron. I can get back my legal rights and a piece of paper can list me as her father, but I can't replace you and the relationship you have with her. I would never want to try. Julie would never want me to try to replace you. But I think you're hoping I can."

Ron looked down at the ground. "She's the luckiest of all of my kids because she has you," he said. "There are times when I think about ending it all. I hate watching them all suffer. But my life insurance won't pay out if I kill myself, and I don't want to lose any more time with them. I want to be able to do as much as I can with them while I still can."

"Then go inside, hug your daughter, and tell her you love her. Make your plans for the weekend. Then go back to the apartment. Relax, watch television, have a glass of wine, screw your hot wife," I said, which made him laugh.

"All of these damn medicines make that impossible these days," he said. "Not that I don't keep trying. If you weren't married, I'd pass that job off to you as well."

"Thanks for thinking of me," I said as we stepped back inside. "Though I doubt Rachel would have liked the idea."

"What wouldn't I like?" Rachel asked as tentatively stepped into the entryway and assessed her husband's mood.

"I told him if he weren't married that I'd let him have the job of keeping you satisfied in bed," Ron said quietly as he wrapped his good arm around her.

"Well he's right, I wouldn't like that. He has a bad habit of getting me pregnant."

"I've gotten you pregnant more often than he has."

"True, but I'm pretty sure he can just look at women a certain way and they get pregnant," Rachel said. "I'm surprised Stephanie hasn't gotten pregnant before now."

"I got her pregnant the same way I got you pregnant," I said as I made to give them some privacy. "Just in a different setting and with intent."

Stephanie was loading dishes into the dishwasher when I walked into the kitchen. She stopped when she saw me come in.

"How is Ron?" she asked.

"Better," I said. "He needed a minute to calm down and get some perspective."

"Julie's upstairs. She is going to pack a bag and go spend the night at Rangeman with Rachel and Ron. But I think you should go talk to her before she leaves. She was still upset and worried about what she said to you."

Rachel and Ron were sitting on the couch as I walked through the living room to the stairs. I found Julie in her room packing her school bag and an overnight bag.

"I'm going to stay with Mom and Dad tonight. They will take me to school in the morning. I already sent Bobby a text," she said when she saw me.

"I think that's a good idea," I told her.

"I really am sorry," she said quietly. "I felt guilty all week about it, but I didn't know how to say it to you. Plus you were always gone so I thought you might be really mad at me."

"I was never mad," I told her. "I didn't know how to handle this either. Like I told your dad, you and I still have a lot to learn about each other. We haven't had much practice at this parent-child thing."

Julie smiled. "Yeah, you're right. Is he okay now?"

I nodded. "He just needed a minute."

Julie stopped to hug me as she headed towards the door with her bags. "I love you. I think you're going to be a really good father to Eva."

"I love you too," I told her. "I hope I can be a good father to both of you."


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: For a little bit of a switch up, this chapter is going to be from Julie's POV.**_

 _February_

I hadn't bothered unpacking most of my stuff when I had moved to New Jersey because I knew we would be moving into the new house soon after I got there, so I didn't have much to do to get ready. Stephanie had been packing some stuff into boxes and had been throwing some stuff away or donating it, crying the entire time. She was really emotional about leaving the house. I kind of understood why, but not really. They weren't selling the house so it wasn't like she would never be back. I had heard Ranger telling her that it would be good to keep in case family came to visit, or for me if I chose to stay in New Jersey for college. But that didn't stop Stephanie from crying.

Ranger was constantly telling her to stop doing things, like lifting heavy boxes or standing on ladders to reach for things in high places. I thought it was cute how he worried about her, but it annoyed her. She was always telling him that she wasn't an invalid just because she was pregnant. I'd heard the argument several times in the past week and figured I would keep hearing it until we moved into the new house the next day. And probably even after the move. Bob was excited, running around the house watching anyone carrying a box.

"Can I help with something?" I asked as they started bickering about packing up a shelf in their bedroom.

"Yes, you can stand on the bed and hand me the stuff that is on that shelf," Ranger said. "And then help me get the shelf down off the wall."

The shelf above the bed was filled with weirdly random stuff, several things looking broken. Stephanie had once told me that it was like a timeline of Ranger's life and that I should ask him about it sometime, but I hadn't had the chance or the nerve. Even though I had gotten to know him a lot better in the past six years, there were still a lot of things I didn't know about him or feel comfortable asking him about. Things hadn't gotten off to the best start after I'd moved in, though Ranger had insisted he wasn't mad about it.

Stephanie left the room, mumbling about Cuban machismo and kicking someone's ass as I climbed up on the bed and started reaching for the items on the shelf.

"This is really random," I said as I looked at everything. "Stephanie told me this stuff all has some sort of meaning for you."

Ranger was emptying the bedside table and throwing things into a box at the foot of the bed. He looked up as I handed him a rosary.

"It does. This rosary belonged to my paternal grandfather. It was the only thing he had with him when he and my grandmother fled Cuba with my father when he was an infant," Ranger said, inspecting the beads. "My grandfather had pissed off Fidel Castro personally and knew he would be arrested so he hurried home, got his family to the airport, and got out of the country before the police could catch him. He managed to get asylum in the United States because of information he was able to provide about Castro."

"That's amazing," I said. "Did he ever talk about it?"

"No," Ranger said. "I only heard the story from my dad after my grandfather died. _Abuelo_ would have never opened up like that."

Like grandfather, like grandson, I thought.

"Is this stuff in chronological order or by importance?" I asked, reaching for a black ballpoint pen.

"Chronological order," he said, taking the pen. "I used this pen to sign my papers to join the Army."

It felt a little weird to ask him questions, but I really wanted to know more about him. He was going to be my legal father again soon. My only living father. I should probably get to know him better. I swallowed a lump in my throat before I spoke again.

"What made you decide to join the Army? Grandma Lola said you went to college at one point. Did you finish?"

"I hadn't been happy in college, and had been debating about whether or not to drop out when 9/11 happened. We had a cousin on the FDNY who was killed in the line of duty. I decided to join the Army three days later."

I was surprised again to learn of the family's connections to major events in the world. Other than Uncle Kevin and Uncle Julio, my mom's family was really dull. Dad's only remaining family was my grandmother and an alcoholic uncle.

"Were you scared to join?" I asked. "Knowing that you were probably going to head off to war? Knowing that you could die?"

He took a minute to think about his answer. "I didn't think about it that way. I knew I was looking for something different, and I wanted to make sure my cousin didn't die for nothing. The woman I had been dating at the time had broken up with me when I joined, so I also had that going for me."

"The woman that shot Stephanie a few years ago?"

"Yes."

I reached for the next item on the shelf, not wanting to think about that time. I hadn't been so scared about something since I had been kidnapped.

"Isn't it blasphemy or something to have a Navy hat when you were in the Army?" I asked, handing Ranger a black SEAL cap.

He took the hat and looked at it for a minute. "A friend gave this to me when we were serving on a joint task force in Iraq. He died two days later. A supporter of Saddam Hussein shot him in the back of the head. It has always reminded me to be vigilant. It's why I don't like to sit with my back exposed."

Man, I had thought I might get a less depressing subject with the hat. I hoped something on the shelf had a happy story behind it. I had enough crap in my own life.

"Half of a pair of handcuffs?" I asked. "Please tell me this isn't a sexual thing."

Ranger actually smiled. "No, it isn't. I was captured by a rebel group while working in Colombia and was held hostage and tortured for three days before I managed to escape. You were about two at the time. Your mom had asked me a couple of months before this happened about allowing Ron to adopt you. I made the decision during it that if I lived through it, I would consent."

He looked up at the shelf. "You gave me that next thing."

It was a small, pink conch shell. I remembered being obsessed with them when I was little. I used to collect them and put them in a bowl in my room. But I had no memory of ever giving one of them to Ranger.

"When did I give this to you?"

"The day your adoption was finalized," he said. He took the shell from me and held it for a moment before wrapping it in bubble wrap.

"Your mom and dad had asked me to come over for lunch that day after the court hearing. I had told them that I would only come around if I was invited, so I wasn't sure when I would see you next. You were sitting on my lap outside by the pool telling me about your trip to the beach the day before. You were showing me that shell and you told me that Ron had helped you dig it out of the sand. I didn't realize it until I had gotten back to my hotel room later that evening, but you had put the shell in my jacket pocket. I wasn't sure if you had just put it in there to be safe or if you had wanted to give it to me," he said. He had avoided looking at me while he had been speaking.

I felt a wave of guilt hit me when I remembered the horrible things I had said to just a couple of weeks ago.

"Was it hard to give me up?" I asked quietly.

"The decision wasn't easy," he said, looking up at me once again. "I knew Ron was a good man and that he could be a good father to you, but part of me didn't want to let go of you. They had told me they would still allow me to see you and that they wouldn't keep the details from you. I hadn't been able to spend much time with you by that point, but I loved you and felt responsible for you, even though I knew that after the Army I was headed back to Jersey. Ironically, part of the reason I decided to let him adopt you was because I was afraid I might get killed before my enlistment was up and I didn't want you to lose someone you associated with being your father when you were a child."

And here I had just said a bunch of shitty things to that effect. God, I felt worse than ever about what I'd said to Ranger. I had spent a lot of my childhood wondering what he was like and what my life might have been like if he hadn't let my dad adopt me. Would I have seen him more often? Would I have ended up being the same person? I still had a ton of questions about the topic, but decided not to push him too far.

"Did you work as a janitor for a while? What's with all the keys?"

"Those are the keys to every car of mine that Stephanie has managed to destroy." 

That made me laugh. "Does she know?"

"Yes, she does," he said, taking the key ring.

"Why did you keep them?"

He shrugged and tossed them into the box. "I didn't have anything else to make me think of her at the time. But I wanted to keep them because I knew she was going to change my life."

"When did you know you were in love with her?"

I thought I saw the corners of Ranger's mouth twitch like he was trying not to smile.

"I think unconsciously I knew it about six months after I met her, but it took another year for me to actually admit it to myself," he said. I had the feeling he wasn't telling me something, but it was probably none of my business.

"What are these?" I asked, holding up a little container to look more closely at the metal pieces inside.

"The bullets from when Scrog shot me. They were pulled out of my vest."

"And you kept them?" I asked. My voice had gone up about an octave by the end of the sentence. The last thing I wanted to do in life was remember the time I'd watched my father get shot in front of me. I'd had nightmares about it for over a year.

"It reminds me of what I'm willing to do for the people I love," he replied quietly.

I didn't want to think about it. My other father was going to be dying soon enough. I didn't want to have to relive one terror right before going through another.

"The beer bottle label is from a bottle I broke the night I got back from Somalia," Ranger said before I had even grabbed the next item. "I scared Stephanie when I threw it against the wall, and it made me realize that I couldn't handle the situation on my own. I'd left for a couple of weeks to get my head straight again, and when I came back I moved in here."

Clearly there was a lot wrapped up in that little piece of paper and he didn't really want to talk more about it. The label was still stuck to a piece of glass and I carefully handed it to Ranger, who wrapped it before putting it in the box.

"Another key?"

"It was to my old apartment in Newark," he said. "That was where I kept all of my personal items before I moved in with Stephanie. I sold the apartment a few months after we moved in together. It was a big move for me."

"Aw, is this from your wedding band?" I asked, holding up the black velvet box.

"Close. Stephanie's engagement ring. That should be self-explanatory."

It was. I had never imagined him actually being able to settle down and commit to a relationship with a woman, but somehow he had managed it with Stephanie. I was glad. She was good for him.

"Another self-explanatory item," I said, holding up the little black and white photo. "I assume this is Eva?"

"It is," he said.

I held it up next to my face. "Do you see any family resemblance yet?"

That made him laugh. "I can barely tell that anything in that picture resembles a human being."

I handed him the sonogram photo and helped him take the shelf down off the wall. He leaned it against the wall next to a bunch of boxes. In the few minutes since I'd walked into the room, I felt like I had gotten to know Ranger better. I didn't think I'd ever know him as well I as knew my dad, but he felt more human to me.

Ranger and Stephanie had taken the next day off to get stuff moved into the new house and supervise while the new furniture was delivered. I had school that day, and Bobby was going to drop me off at the new house on the way home.

I had been annoyed with Ranger when he had told me that one of the security guards at the school would be my transportation. I had wanted to take the train or a bus. I had wanted to feel more independent than I was since I couldn't get my driver's license for another year in New Jersey. But when Bobby Brown showed up at the door to get me, I was suddenly very grateful. To say Bobby was hot was an understatement. He was muscular like all of the men who worked at Rangeman, but wasn't a giant like some of them. Bobby could blend in, and riding with a hot guy in his awesome car no longer felt embarrassing. At first, Bobby wasn't very talkative. He would answer questions with one or two words, which I guessed must be a requirement to work for Ranger, but with time he relaxed more and would even start conversations. He asked how school was going, what I was studying, and how I liked my classmates. I fished for information about him in my questions, wanting to know whatever I could about him. By February, I had learned that he was thirty-two years old, currently unattached, had never been married, was from Asheville, North Carolina, had joined the Marines straight out of high school, and had three brothers and a sister. Like me, all of his siblings were half-siblings because his parents had divorced when he was two and both had remarried. He had a brother my age and a sister three years younger than me.

"How is your dad doing?" Bobby asked as we drove out of the neighborhood. Bobby and I had gotten to know each other well enough that I had confessed to him that while I called Ranger _Dad_ , I still referred to him as Ranger in my head. When I thought of _Dad_ , I immediately thought of Ron Martine.

"He's getting worse," I said quietly. "It seems like things are speeding up now. He had another scan a couple of days ago and the tumor has grown a lot."

I hadn't seen my dad since the weekend he and my mom had come up to see me in Trenton. They had told me to wait until the weekend after we got moved into the new house to come down to Miami for my first visit. I felt like they kept finding reasons to keep me from flying down, but I wasn't going to let them stop me from coming the following weekend. It will have been six weeks since I left home, and I didn't want to tell Ranger and Stephanie that I was homesick. I was also missing time spent with my dad. Talking to him on the computer wasn't the same, and I felt like I was missing out opportunities to do what few things he could do while I was in New Jersey. But he always reminded me that he wanted to see me at school and that was the best gift I could give him.

Going to Chesterton was so different from my school in Miami. I had been at a Spanish immersion school, where the curriculum was taught in Spanish while most of us were non-native speakers. I was now fluent in Spanish, and rather than take the easy route, I had opted to study Italian as my foreign language requirement at Chesterton. But it was still strange to have teachers speaking to me in English, with Italian class being the exception. I had finally made some friends in my grade. Two girls, Mia Long and Ashleigh Mays, were also from Florida. Mia had grown up on Sanibel Island and Ashleigh was from Orlando. Both had come to the school in sixth grade. We sat at lunch with some other girls that I didn't really like, but tolerated because they were Mia's and Ashleigh's friends. The boys liked me a lot, but I'd tried not to pay attention. I was trying to get comfortable at school, plus my dad was dying. I wanted to stay focused on my school work so that I got good grades. Since coming to Chesterton was so important to my dad, I didn't want to let him down by doing anything less than my best.

When I arrived at the new house later that day, I was happy to find that my bedroom was ready and waiting for me. I finally had a real bed again, having slept on the pull out sofa in the office at the old house for the past six weeks. I'd gone with a turquoise and black theme in my room with little mirrors and black-and-white photos on the walls. It felt more mature than the room I'd had to share with my younger sister down in Miami, where she still obsessed over One Direction.

The boxes I needed to unpack where sitting in the middle of the floor, and I began unpacking at once. It was Friday, and I had the whole weekend ahead of me to do my homework. I knew I wouldn't feel settled until I had the pictures and personal items I'd brought with me scattered around the room. I wanted this to feel like home, or as close to home as I could manage away from my parents and siblings.

I would hear Ranger and Stephanie walking up and down the halls, occasionally checking in to see how I was doing or asking my help with something. Ella, the woman that took care of feeding the guys at the Rangeman office, along with Aunt Silvia helped get the house organized. Most of the stuff in the house was new, and the furniture had been moved in and set up over the last couple of days. Most of what we had moved in was personal items, so unpacking was completely finished by dinnertime. After Ella and Silvia left, we played rock-paper-scissors to see who was responsible for figuring out dinner for the three of us. I lost, so I decided to order pizza. We quickly realized we weren't as familiar with the surrounding area and spent several minutes searching for pizza places on our phones that delivered to our neighborhood. Stephanie had actually called _Pino's_ to see if they would deliver out to the new house, even for an extra charge, but they had laughed at her and hung up.

On my way to bed that night, I stopped in to see the nursery. It was the smallest of the bedrooms, but it was still good-sized. The furniture was dark wood, and a white glider rocker that looked just like a normal easy chair sat in the corner. The walls were purple, and curtains and pictures in various shades of purple made it feel kind of elegant for a baby's room. I was excited for Ranger and Stephanie to have a baby of their own. If I thought about it too much, it would weird me out just a little to think about the fact that I would be almost old enough to be a mother to my newest baby sister. I hadn't told a soul, but I had lost my virginity at the end of the summer to one of the boys in my neighborhood in Miami. Once I had found out that Stephanie was pregnant, I had found myself feeling a little uncomfortable knowing that she and Ranger had done what I had done with Mario Lucca, though it had probably lasted longer. But I forced my mind not to go there. No one wanted to think of their parents having sex, though on a couple of uncomfortable occasions in the past six weeks, I was pretty sure I had heard the sounds of Stephanie and Ranger having sex in the room next door. I was glad that their room was now on the opposite corner of the house from mine.

I took a few minutes to talk to my parents on the computer and carried my computer around to give them a tour of my bedroom and the main living areas on the first floor. I noticed my dad didn't talk much and his smile seemed forced. My mom did her best to keep the conversation flowing and attention off my dad, and I did my best to keep my voice steady and the tears hidden from my parents. There had been a few times in the last week where I had thought about my dad dying in his sleep before he got to the point that he couldn't eat and stayed in bed all the time. I knew he hated how much my mom had to take care of him, and that it was only going to get worse. I didn't want to lose any time with him, but once he reached the point where he no longer talked or remembered any of us, was that time even valuable? I could only imagine it being more painful.

As I ended the call with my parents and climbed into bed, I wondered how my life was going to change once my dad was gone. The _what-ifs_ between whether or not Ranger had allowed me to be adopted and those of my dad having never been sick became overwhelming with possibilities for paths my life could have taken. Was I happy with where I had ended up? Would I have rather ended up on a different path? In the back of my mind was this ideal where my mom and Ranger had stayed married and had more kids, but they wouldn't be Tony or Olivia or Michael. And Stephanie wouldn't have been in the picture. I guess I was happy with where my life had ended up, but I wondered if I would be able to feel happy again once my dad was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

_**A/N: Back to Ranger.**_

 _April_

Cameras covered every square inch of my building that didn't invade personal privacy. I could pull up a camera at any moment and see in every office or cubicle, and would do so on occasion to monitor employee behavior. I knew that Hal had a habit of chewing on his bottom lip as he worked on the computer and that he typed with just his index fingers. I suspected Phil Martin had ADHD by the way he was constantly fidgeting in his seat and doodling on paper while he watched the internal security monitors. Ella would occasionally forget that she was on camera and would dance in place while arranging the food in the dining room. Stephanie talked to herself a lot and played with her hair while she worked on the computer or talked on the phone. Now that she was pregnant, she also tended to run her hand over her swollen belly. She was doing that now as I watched her on the computer in my office. Her baby shower was in less than an hour and I knew she was doing everything her in power to find some reason to get out of it. She had speculated on the various things she was likely to hate about it from the food to the comments about gifts and even some of the gifts themselves.

"Shouldn't you be changing clothes?" I said into the speaker phone on my desk. I watched the camera and saw Stephanie jolt in surprise at the sound of my voice. I smirked, unsure of why I enjoyed startling her so much.

"I will," she said without much enthusiasm. "Do you want to go with me?"

"Not a chance," I replied. "But you'll never hear the end of it from your mother if you're late."

I watched as she cleared her desk and headed out of her office. One of the new guys on the control room floor had a bad habit of checking out Stephanie's ass when she passed by his cubicle, but I hadn't said anything to him yet. No one else had noticed it and he had never done it in my presence. I couldn't exactly blame him. She had a nice ass and it had gotten even nicer since she had gotten pregnant.

I had been keeping myself distracted all day because I knew things were going to go downhill very soon. I had known it for over a week now. I had gone to my office in Miami for a series of meetings while Julie spent her spring break with Rachel and Ron. Ron's condition had continued to decline and he was to the point that he no longer walked. But he was still fairly clear about what he wanted, though he continued to forget people's names or the words for familiar items. Ron had asked me to join him outside while Rachel helped Julie get settled in her room.

"I don't want to get worse," he said, his speech slower and more labored. "I have already had more time than I thought I would. I don't want to—to—," he struggled to find the word he wanted to use. "—suffer." He looked over at me and I saw a hint of desperation in his eyes. I had seen the same desperation in the eyes of men I had watched die in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Can you help me?" he asked quietly.

My throat tightened slightly while I considered his request. He wanted me to help him end his suffering. I wasn't opposed to such things—I knew that if I were in his position I would want the same thing. But he was Julie's father, and the idea of her and Stephanie possibly ever finding out that I had helped him was more terrifying than the possible legal ramifications. I wasn't sure how Stephanie would feel about the issue, but I knew Julie would feel robbed of time with her father. She would hate me.

"Rachel can't know," he elaborated. "She wouldn't allow it. She's too Catholic."

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" I asked. "Rachel was just talking about how much you are still able to do for yourself."

He shifted in his wheelchair and stared out over the pool for a minute. "She likes to think so. She sets everything up for me so that I don't do much. I don't want her to have to feed me or clean me when I start shitting myself. I want to go out of this life with my— _dignity —_ intact. Can't you understand that?"

I _could_ understand that. I promised that I would see what was available and got in touch with contacts I had in the area that would know. By the time I picked Julie up on that Saturday, I had obtained a vial of what was called _La Muerta._ It was favored by mid-level assassins in the drug trafficking world.

"Keep this out of sight until you're ready to use it," I told him quietly as we sat in the kitchen talking while Julie finished gathering her belongings. "You need to make sure to get rid of the vial right away. You'll only have an hour at most until it takes effect. I'm told its painless, and isn't detectable in blood work or an autopsy."

"Thank you," he replied as he put the vial in his pocket. "I'm going to use it next Saturday night before bed so that it will just look like I died in my sleep." He looked down at his hands and bit his bottom lip.

"The vial will stay effective for a month, in case you decide to wait," I told him.

He wiped his eyes and shook his head. "I won't change my mind. I got to see Julie, and I'll get to have this week with the other kids and—and—my wife."

As Julie and I made to leave, I watched Ron as he hugged her with the knowledge that it would be the last time. I could see the emotion in his eyes as she talked about their plans for her weekend visit in two weeks and he simply told her he looked forward to it. I couldn't find anything to say to Ron before I left, but there didn't seem to be a need. We had already said what we needed to say and were now just waiting for the inevitable.

I left work at four that afternoon when Stephanie sent a text message to say that she and Julie were headed home from the baby shower and that her sister and mother were helping to bring the gifts back to the house. I couldn't imagine what people could have bought for the baby since we already had the furniture in the nursery. I knew Stephanie had been out putting things on a gift registry at one point, but I had declined to be part of that particular task. I arrived home to find Stephanie, Julie, Valerie, and Helen sitting in the living room sorting through mountains of clothing, boxes of various baby paraphernalia, and enough diapers to last a year.

"I don't think we'll have to buy another thing before the baby gets here," Stephanie told me.

"It looks like we won't have to buy her anything else until she heads off to college," I replied, picking up a box for a video baby monitor. I was going to have it inspected by one of my best people to make sure that the video feed couldn't be hacked from outside of the house.

"Babies go through clothes nearly as fast as they go through diapers," Helen commented as she reached for her purse. "Most of these things won't be useful after the first few months. A year at the most."

It sounded like a waste of money to me, but I didn't think I had any room to talk seeing as I used to give Stephanie cars that I knew would be destroyed in record time. Stephanie thanked her mother and sister for their help and saw them to the door. I stood next to Julie and assessed how many trips it would take to get all of the baby items upstairs into the nursery. I had to think about baby things because the alternative was thinking about Ron ending his life in a matter of hours and the phone call that I would get from Rachel shortly afterwards.

"It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be," Stephanie said when she came back to the living room. "They didn't do that ridiculous thing where they have people try to measure how big they think my belly is. I've always hated that because people always measure too big and then it's just insulting."

"The only reason it didn't happen is because I told her mother that Stephanie had her gun in her purse and that I was afraid she would use it if they tried to play that game," Julie muttered to me as we started picking up items to carry upstairs.

"Good call," I said.

We ordered Chinese for dinner and ate it in the family room while watching Julie's favorite movie _A Streetcar Named Desire._ Stephanie fell asleep on the couch midway through the movie and I kept checking the clock on the wall. Ron said he wanted it to look like he died in his sleep, but when would that be? Did he go to bed early? Would Rachel check on him in the night? I didn't regret my decision to help him. I owed him more than I could ever possibly repay, and giving him the chance to go out on his own terms with his dignity in place was the least I could do. I had been careful when obtaining it from my sources so that there would be no trace back to myself or Ron if the DEA were watching anyone, but the possible legal ramifications of helping someone commit suicide started to weigh on me. I wasn't sure why I was so concerned about getting arrested, especially since I had committed pre-meditated murder without being suspected. The only reason I could think of was Stephanie and the unborn baby that I could feel moving inside of her as we lay together in bed that night. When I had killed Abruzzi all those years ago, my involvement in Julie's life had been minimal and Stephanie had been Morelli's girlfriend. I had been committed to a bachelor's life and had killed for the selfish fact that I had fallen in love with Stephanie and didn't want to lose her, even if I had no plans for her other than the occasional night in bed. But now she was my wife and the mother of one of my children. I had my older child now depending on me to pick up the role I had passed on years ago to a now-dying man.

The nap on the couch during the movie had given Stephanie enough energy to want sex, but I declined for perhaps the third time in all the years I had known her. I gave an excuse about having hurt my back during my work out that morning. I was tense knowing that I would be getting a call about Ron.

The call came shortly after six that morning. I didn't need to look at my phone to know who it was. I reached out for the phone and answered.

"He's gone," Rachel said in a quiet voice. Her tone was neutral and filled with disbelief. "He died in his sleep last night."

"I'm sorry, Rachel," I said, staring at the ceiling.

"It was so sudden. He wasn't that bad yet. The hospice nurse said that these things happen sometimes. That people can keep going fairly strong until right at the end. It doesn't make sense." She was silent for a moment. "The funeral home is coming to get him soon," her voice began to break as she said it. "I can't tell Julie over the phone. Can you tell her?"

I hesitated for a second, then remembered that I couldn't get out of this. I was Julie's father—her only living father now. "Yes, I'll tell her. We will be down there sometime later today or early tomorrow morning."

She thanked me and disconnected. By the time I put the phone back on the table, Stephanie was awake and watching me.

"Ron died in his sleep," I told her. She looked surprised—the way I should have looked and felt.

"That seems sudden," she said. "Julie was just talking about how much stuff he could still do for himself."

I shrugged as I rolled over to sit up on the side of the bed. "I don't know. I have to go tell her."

I pulled on a t-shirt and sweat pants before walking down to Julie's bedroom at the end of the hall. I listened at her door for a moment before opening it and glancing over at her sleeping form under the blankets. Julie and I slept in similar positions, both of us on our backs with one arm above our head, hand tucked under the edge of the pillow. I had started sleeping that way during the Army when I couldn't sleep soundly because I was constantly on alert to be attacked. I still slept that way now, though with less reason other than habit. How that had carried over to my child was beyond me. I didn't want to do it because I knew it was going to hurt her. I had learned that your child's pain was always going to become your own, even if you had kept yourself emotionally distanced for most of that child's life.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her shoulder. She woke up when I said her name.

"What?" she whined. "It's Sunday."

"Your dad died in his sleep last night," I told her. Her eyes immediately opened and she sat up in bed.

"What? How? I mean, he's not that bad," she said startled. "I don't understand. He—he had more time."

Guilt hit me like a semi-truck. Ron had ended his own suffering, but what about that of his family? They would have suffered anyway, but was it going to be worse because they had expected to have more time with him?

"I'm sorry, Julie," I said to her as she stared at her quilt in shock. My apology wasn't just for condolence, but for my role in her current pain. "I'll get us down to Miami today or tomorrow."

She nodded absentmindedly and laid back down in her bed, this time curling up on her left side in the fetal position. I left her room and pulled the door closed behind me. I found Stephanie sitting in bed with her laptop open.

"There are flights out of Newark that leave at four, five-fifteen, and seven-twenty," she said I as sat down next to her. "I think we could make any of those. We would just have to pick a return date."

"You aren't going anywhere," I told her and tried to take the computer from her. She jerked it angrily out of my reach.

"And why not?"

I nodded towards her enormous belly. "You have less than five weeks until your due date. Plus, you've been having trouble with your blood pressure. I doubt the doctor is going to want you to fly."

"I'll be fine," she said. "It's not like I have to fly the plane. Besides, everything I've ever read says women can safely fly until thirty-six weeks. That's still five days away for me."

"I'm not arguing with you," I told her. "I have enough to worry about with Julie. I don't need to worry about you having complications in mid-flight or while we are out of town and away from your doctor."

She opened her mouth to argue, but I held up a hand. "Please, Stephanie. I can't do this right now."

She heaved a sigh of resignation and handed me her computer. "I'm sorry. I know I'm not needed there. I just hate feeling trapped here."

I took the computer and purchased tickets for myself and Julie to leave on the four o'clock flight.

"How did she take it?" Stephanie asked as I entered my credit card information.

"She's in shock," I replied. "She thought she would have more time with him."

"I think we all did. Do you think—," she trailed off and I glanced over at her.

"What?"

"Do you think he could have taken things into his own hands, ending his suffering before it got any worse?"

My stomach did a flip and I turned back to the computer. "I don't know. I guess it's possible."

I focused all of my attention on ensuring that the flight details were perfect before I finalized the information. I could feel Stephanie watching me and it made me edgy. She was too perceptive for her own good at times. She knew me better than anyone else and could tell that something was off.

Stephanie went to check on Julie while I started packing. I had clothes at the apartment down there, but I needed something to occupy my mind and decided to pack one of my nicer suits for the funeral. Would anyone question Ron's death the way Stephanie had? Rachel said the funeral home was coming for him. That indicated that there wouldn't be an autopsy, not that _La Muerta_ would be detected anyway. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. I had to calm myself down. I needed to be present in the moment right now. Julie needed me. I could practically hear Ron saying _you're the only father she has left now_. I owed it to him to be there for her, but I knew I couldn't help her the way he would have. He would have known how best to comfort her. He had all of those paternal skills that I had lacked.

Stephanie came into our walk-in closet as I was zipping my suitcase. She went over to the wall and opened safe that was hidden behind a picture that said _I love you more than yesterday…yesterday you got on my nerves._ I watched as she pulled out five black velvet boxes and closed the safe.

"What are those?" I asked. I hadn't opened the safe in a while to know anything different was in there.

"Do you remember when Ron gave me an envelope when we were there to move Julie up here?"

I nodded. I had forgotten about it, but recalled that it had bothered me not knowing something.

"He had called me a couple of weeks before to ask for my help in finding something special that he could do for Rachel and the kids. He wanted them to have something that they could remember him by once he was gone. I found something and needed his signature for it," she said as she laid the boxes on the bed.

She opened one box and showed it to me. Inside was a silver chain with the words _Love, Dad_ written in Ron's handwriting in the center.

Here was evidence that Ron was the father who needed to be here with Julie. He was the type of man who would think of something to help bring comfort to his family after he was gone. The only comfort I would have considered was financial security. I was about to become a father to a newborn and now I had to figure out how to be a real father to my grieving sixteen year-old. I felt like I was in over my head. I handed the box back to her and kissed her.

"You should give this to Julie now. I'll make sure Rachel gets the rest of them," I told her.

I hated that Stephanie couldn't come with us to Miami because I needed her there. She knew how to handle emotions and people in a way that was foreign to me. She had done the research to find something special for Ron to give to his family. He had known she would be the best person to do it. But I also wanted her there for myself. Ron wasn't just Julie's adoptive father, but a friend. We'd been like brothers-in-fatherhood, each with our own role in the united front of raising and protecting our daughter. Now the job rested solely on the shoulders of the least qualified man.


	12. Chapter 12

" **Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." ~Lao Tzu**

 _Three weeks later…_

Stephanie's maternity leave began two weeks before her due date. She had wanted to take the time to make sure everything was ready for the baby. She had also developed an odd anxiety about going into labor at the office since entering her third trimester. Although she continued to read the pregnancy book and received plenty of unsolicited advice about long, difficult labors, she was terrified that she would go into labor at the office while I wasn't there and that it would progress so quickly that one of the men would have to deliver the baby either in her office or one of the fleet vehicles on the way to the hospital. All of the reassurances in the world couldn't convince her of the unlikelihood of that particular scenario.

I knew all of the aspects of Stephanie's job—having managed them all myself in the earliest days of my company—but after three days without her in the office I found myself appreciating her position even more. I hadn't managed most of those tasks in several years and had forgotten the time and complexity involved. I was sitting at my desk pouring over schedules for the next month when the front desk paged.

"Jeanne Ellen Burrows is here to see you," the desk manager said. "She doesn't have an appointment."

I couldn't recall the last time I'd had any sort of contact with Jeanne Ellen. Our professional contact had all but ended once I got out of the bond enforcement game. Our sexual relationship had ended before that, once I'd realized the depths of my feelings for Stephanie.

"Send her up," I said. I didn't really have the time to give, but my curiosity won out. Stephanie was a bad influence on me.

I could see Jeanne Ellen as she walked through the control room towards my office. She was dressed in a black suit with a white v-cut shirt and her breasts jiggled as she walked. I knew from experience that they were fake and that she rarely wore a bra. Most of the eyes in the room immediately locked on to her and followed her all the way to my office.

"This is unexpected," I commented as the door shut behind her and she took the seat opposite me. She crossed her legs and leaned back, hands clasped on her knee.

"I think me being here is one of the less unexpected things that has happened since the last time we saw each other," she replied. "You getting married to Stephanie Plum, for one. Having a baby with her is another."

"What do you want?" I asked. "If it is a commentary on my life over the past six years, I'll have to take a rain check."

"I want a job," she said. That took me by surprise. Jeanne Ellen's personality was like mine—we functioned best when we were the one in control, and even better when we worked alone.

"I tried to get you to work for me several years ago, but you said no. You preferred being your own boss."

"I did, and I still do in some ways. But I can't keep up. I'm losing business to bigger companies likes yours that can offer more. What I was thinking of was a mutually beneficial relationship—I bring in clients and revenue to your business while still having some freedom to work the way I want with the benefit of your resources and expertise. Not to mention, you would benefit from having more female employees than just your pregnant wife and a housekeeper," Jeanne Ellen finished, a small smirk crossing her face.

I raised an eyebrow while I considered her proposal. We tended to operate in different circles, and having her contacts could be good for business. Not that Rangeman was hurting for business, but a smart businessman always had to consider alternate sources of revenue.

"Think about it," Jeanne Ellen said as she stood up. "You know how to reach me."

Her exit garnered as much attention as her entrance had. That was one problem of hiring her—she would be a distraction. Stephanie's presence in the office hadn't been disruptive because I had made it clear that she was off-limits to everyone but me from the beginning. And while there were plenty of men who found Stephanie beautiful, she wasn't attractive in the same way as Jeanne Ellen. Jeanne Ellen was sexy on a universal level. And more than just being a distraction for the men, I worried that Stephanie might be uncomfortable working with her. She knew that Jeanne Ellen and I had been sexually-involved at a point in time, and even if she didn't admit it, I knew it bothered her.

I spent the rest of the day with Jeanne Ellen's proposal working around in the back of my mind. I was having a hard time finding the gray area in it all and constantly fought the desire to call her up and give a yes or no answer without further thought. My personal and professional lives were battling in a way that I hated, but couldn't avoid. By the time I walked out of the office at six that evening, I had figured out what I would do.

I arrived home to Stephanie and Julie eating at the dining room table. Both had plates of spaghetti and salads. Bob laid on the floor under Julie's feet, obviously hoping she would feed him something from her plate. I helped myself to dinner and took my seat next to Stephanie.

"Has the office fallen apart without me?" she asked through a mouthful of pasta.

"Not yet. But today would have been more interesting if you had been there. I had an unexpected visit from Jeanne Ellen," I said nonchalantly, watching her expression out of my peripheral vision. I saw her visibly tense and rub a hand across her stomach.

"What did she want?"

"A job. She's struggling to keep her business at the level she prefers so she wants to work for me. She figures it would be mutually beneficial because she would bring in clients and revenue while benefitting from working for me and having access to my resources."

The density of the silence in the dining room grew with each passing second. I noticed Julie's every more became almost silent, as though she hoped we would forget she was sitting there and not kick her out to have the Jeanne Ellen discussion. Stephanie took three more bites and chewed them slowly before stopping to speak again.

"When does she start working?"

"I never said I was going to hire her."

Stephanie visibly relaxed. "Then what's the issue?"

"My instinct is to hire her because I think it would be better to have Jeanne Ellen on my side than against me. I had tried to get her to work for me when I first opened my business, but she hadn't wanted that. She has access to circles I haven't breached and she has contacts that I could benefit from cultivating. It would also be good to have a woman in the field department," I replied.

"I'm a woman in the field department," she retorted. "Once I get back from maternity leave I can go back out into the field again."

I set my fork down and rubbed my temples, prepared for an argument. "Julie, go eat in the kitchen."

Julie huffed. "Why? I can still hear everything you guys say. It's a room, not a soundproof booth."

"Then go to your room," I said, giving her a look I normally reserved for my employees. She let out another annoyed sigh as she got up from her chair and left the room. I could hear her footsteps heavy on the stairs.

"I didn't want to give Jeanne Ellen an answer without talking to you about this. It's not just about the job, but its personal," I began. "I know you don't like Jeanne Ellen, especially because you know we had a sexual relationship in the past. I don't want you to be unhappy at work or with me. If you really don't think you can handle it then I won't hire her. But I also wanted to talk to you about your role when you come back from maternity leave. I don't want you doing field work anymore. I would prefer you stay in the office or stick to safer roles like going out to meet with new clients or handling problems with accounts." I braced myself for the tongue-lashing I was about to receive.

"What?!" Stephanie exclaimed. "You think because I'll be a mother that I'm not capable of doing field work? That I couldn't stop someone or shoot them if I had to? How sexist is that?"

I reached over for her hand, but she jerked it away. She got up from the table and stalked off into the family room. I got up to follow her, vaguely aware of Bob moving in to eat our abandoned dinners.

"Babe, I'm not saying that I don't think you're capable of doing the job," I said, taking a seat next to her on the sofa. "I know you can take care of yourself. The reason I don't want you doing the potentially dangerous work anymore is because we can't just think of ourselves anymore. We have to consider what is best for our daughter. I can't stay out of the field because I'm the boss and I have to be able to be anywhere I need to be, but you can. I'm not willing to have both of us at risk of being killed on the job. And frankly, if one of us had to die, it would be better to be me. You're of much more value to her than I am. You would be able to raise her without me. I don't know that I could raise her without you. I'm not entirely sure I could keep myself alive if something happened to you."

"Don't patronize me," Stephanie snapped. "You're so sexist. All of you men are. You don't think women are capable of being anything but mothers and bodies to put your dick in before they hurry off to the kitchen to make your dinner. And now you want to hire Jeanne Ellen Burrows because she's sexy and capable and you don't have to worry about her being too distracted because she doesn't have any children at home."

She got up from the couch and grabbed her purse from a nearby table.

"Where are you going?"

"To my parents' house. My mom will have dessert that the dog hasn't already licked."

I listened as she slammed the door leading to the garage behind her. I leaned my head back on the sofa and closed my eyes. Stephanie's hormones had been out of control lately. I should have waited until after the baby was born to talk about it.

I cleaned up the now-empty and practically spotless dishes from the dining room table and loaded them into the dishwasher. Bob laid on his bed in the corner of the kitchen looking like he was practically comatose.

"Too many carbs will do that to you," I commented as I passed him. His tail slapped against the cushion a couple of times in lazy acknowledgment.

I headed upstairs and knocked on Julie's closed bedroom door. She opened it seconds later, her bad attitude evident.

"Bob ate your dinner, so if you want anything else you'll have to make it or order pizza."

Julie rolled her eyes. "You didn't have to send me away like a little kid. I can handle you two having a fight. I'm not some fragile little doll who will fall apart watching her parents argue."

I raised an eyebrow in lieu of heaving the sigh that I would have preferred. Julie was usually very mature for her age, but occasionally—particularly when she was stressed—she would turn into the typical teenager. She had handled Ron's death as well as could be expected, but this wasn't her first round of teenage attitude since we had come back from the funeral. But after dealing with an emotional, pregnant wife who had just left the house in a huff, I found myself not having the patience for attitude from my sixteen year-old.

"I didn't send you away because I thought you couldn't handle seeing us argue. I sent you away because it wasn't any of your business. Not everything about my life or relationship with Stephanie is open to you."

Julie huffed and slammed the door in my face. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, clenching my left hand into a fist before I opened the door and walked into the room.

"Do not disrespect me like that," I told her as she threw herself onto her bed. "I am your father, and this is my house. I have enough going on that I don't need to deal with your attitude."

"You're only my father now because you have no choice," she shot back.

"I have absolutely no legal obligation to do anything for you," I said coldly. "I haven't had any since I signed away my rights. I have paid child support, visited you, let you come up here to visit, and move in with me because I _wanted_ to do those things _._ And we don't have to go through with me getting those legal rights and obligations back if that's what you want. But as long as you live here you will be respectful, or I will send you either to live at the school or back to Florida."

I left the room and shut the door firmly behind me. I walked down to the basement and debated if I wanted to work out or just work. I had to do something to distract myself from the emotional women in my life. I opted to go into my office and get a head start on schedules for the next eight weeks when I would be more distracted— and possibly away from the office more— because of the baby. At least once the baby was born there would be one woman in the house that I could understand and make happy. If nothing else, she couldn't yell at me if I pissed her off.

My cell phone rang two hours later as I was finishing up schedules through the end of June. It was Rachel.

"What happened with Julie?" she asked. She didn't sound accusatory or angry, but curious. "She told me you don't want to go through with the adoption and that you threatened to send her to live somewhere else."

I resisted the urge to smack myself in the forehead the way Stephanie sometimes does, but just barely. "She got upset because I told her to leave the room when Stephanie and I were arguing. She thought I was treating her like a child. I told her it was because what we had to talk about was none of her business and she slammed the door in my face. I don't need to go into the details, but I got angry with her for being disrespectful and she took it even further. I didn't tell her that I don't want to go through with the adoption. I told her we didn't have to do it if she didn't want it, and I told her that I expected her to be more respectful or she could go live at school or back to Florida. I didn't handle it as well as I could have. I was just coming away from being yelled at by Stephanie and wasn't in the mood to get it from her either."

"I figured it must be something like that. You'll work it out?" Rachel asked.

"Yes, I'll take care of it."

We talked for a few more minutes about how Julie was otherwise doing and how Rachel and the other kids were coping without Ron. I leaned my head back and sighed heavily after I hung up the phone. Women were exhausting. Times like this reminded me of why I had stayed single for so long.

"Is that exasperated sigh because of me?" Stephanie asked from the doorway. I didn't bother to open my eyes.

"No, this one is because of Julie. But there have been a few in the past couple of hours with your name on them," I responded.

I heard her walk across the floor and turned to look at her.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I'm hormonal and crazy. I know you're right. I hate it, but I can accept it. I'm sorry I called you sexist. You're not sexist. Well, maybe a little, but not badly. And if you really want to hire Jeanne Ellen Burrows, then go ahead. But if she even thinks about putting the moves on you, I get to shoot her."

I pulled Stephanie down onto my lap and she snuggled into my chest. I rubbed her back with one hand and her belly with the other.

"Yes, you're crazy right now, but apology accepted. And I'll make sure to put that caveat into Jeanne Ellen's contract."

"What's going on with Julie?" she asked, her voice muffled by my shirt.

I gave her the Cliff notes version of the argument.

"It really sucks to be you right now," she said once I finished. "Two emotional women in one house and no men to back you up."

"Tell me about it."

I followed Stephanie upstairs a few minutes later. As we headed down the hall to our bedroom, I stopped outside of Julie's bedroom door. It was slightly ajar and I could hear music playing. It sounded like James Taylor singing "You Can Close Your Eyes."

"I'll be there in a minute," I said to Stephanie and I rapped on the door pushing it open. Julie was sitting at her desk with her back to me. She had her legs pulled up to her chest, her heels resting on the edge of the seat. She was staring at the computer screen where a picture of Rachel, Ron and all four kids was displayed. The picture had been taken on a beach somewhere and sometime within the last couple of years. The music was emanating from the computer and was accompanied by sniffles from Julie.

I walked across the room and leaned on the desk. She didn't look up, but cast a glance at my feet. I wasn't quite sure how to start the conversation that I knew we needed to have.

"I should have handled your behavior differently," I began. "I have every intention of going through with the adoption and I don't plan to send you away to live somewhere else. I didn't mean for you to think either of those things."

She didn't say anything until the song finished. She wiped away a tear and closed her laptop.

"I'm sorry for how I acted," she said quietly. "I'm trying to deal with it on my own, but I don't think I'm doing a very good job of it."

I didn't have to ask what _it_ was. "Do you want to go counseling?"

She nodded. "I think I need to. Mom has been trying to get me to go. I yelled at one of my friends the other day because I thought she was talking about me. I've yelled at Mom a couple of times since he died. I'm not going to have anyone around who likes me pretty soon."

"I'll check into it," I promised. "Is there anything you want to talk about tonight?"

She seemed to consider it, but shook her head. "Sometimes I feel weird talking to you about him. I love you both, but in different ways."

"I understand," I said, and I did. It was awkward for me to hear her talk about the man who had volunteered to take over a role that I hadn't wanted at the time. And I knew that I loved Julie, but that I would love Eva differently because of the difference in my involvement.

I placed a kiss on the top of her head and told her good night. I had just reached the hallway when I heard Stephanie let out a small cry. I hurried into the bedroom to find her doubled over in pain.

"I think I'm having a contraction," she gasped. Her face was pale and she had a death grip on the footboard of our bed. I put a hand on her back as she waved for the pain to pass. It lasted about ten more seconds and then seemed to subside.

"Wow, that took my breath away," she said. I made a mental note of the time in order pay attention to when the next one came along.

"Do you need anything from me?" I asked.

"Just hold my hand, tell me I'm beautiful, and that it'll all be over soon," she said. The next contraction came ten minutes later as we were pulling on pajamas.

"I was more prepared for that one," she said after it finished. "It didn't hurt quite as bad."

I didn't comment that I was pretty sure it would get worse as time went on. That wasn't part of what I was allowed to say. So I told her it would be fine and it would all be over soon.

And that was how we spent the next thirty-nine hours.


	13. Chapter 13

We walked into St. Francis Hospital after Stephanie's labor had been in progress for thirty hours. Her contractions were still only ten minutes apart, but she was exhausted from not being able to sleep. She was also struggling to keep food down because she felt nauseous from the pain. I had eventually made the executive decision to call the doctor, despite Stephanie's protests that she wasn't supposed to call about her labor unless the contractions were five minutes apart for an hour or her water broke. Dr. Fuschetto returned my call and told me to take Stephanie to the hospital. She was due to start her rounds in less than two hours and would follow up with us once she had talked to the nurses. She said prolonged labor could be hard on both Stephanie and the baby and didn't want to take any risks, so it was likely that her labor would have to be further induced.

Stephanie had packed a bag that had everything she and the baby would need for a two-day hospital stay along with a list of items that would need to be packed last minute, such as her phone charger and laptop. The bag looked as though she were preparing to climb Mount Everest. I packed a small bag for myself and went to update Julie.

"I want to go with you!" she said immediately. She jumped out of bed and ran to her closet, even though she didn't need to be up for school for another hour.

"You need to go to school," I told her. "I will keep you updated on how Stephanie is doing. Bobby can bring you to the hospital after school. And I'm going to have my mother come down to stay with you. I'm planning to stay with Stephanie."

"I can stay here by myself," Julie whined. "And I'm sure I can get out of school because my stepmother is having a baby. It's a medical thing."

"Go to school, and don't give your grandmother a hard time," I said as I walked out of the room.

Stephanie was waiting for me downstairs. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a purple t-shirt. She was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes because she has been awake for forty-eight hours with very little sleep. Bob had been anxious ever since Stephanie's contractions had begun and hadn't wanted to leave her side even to go outside. He was now sitting next to her and watching her intently. If she had a contraction and I wasn't right next to her, Bob would come running to find me and bark incessantly until I was by her side.

The drive to the hospital was quiet with the exception of the occasional intake of breath or soft moans that Stephanie would emit every ten minutes. The sun was just beginning to rise as we pulled up to the hospital. I let Stephanie out at the main door and we were greeted by a volunteer who looked like Betty White. The woman found a wheelchair, told me how to get to the Maternity unit, and wheeled Stephanie off down a long hallway. I parked the car in one of the available garages and carried our bags up to the fourth floor of the north wing of the hospital. The Maternity unit was locked and I had to be buzzed in through a set of double doors. Signs along the walls reminded people of the visiting hours and that infants would not be permitted out of the unit without approval. The floor was divided into two sections: Labor & Deliver on the left and Postpartum on the right. I turned left and walked through a second set of doors. I was greeted by the sounds of ringing phones and the anguished cries of a woman who was likely giving birth. A nurse pointed me in the direction of Stephanie's room, which was at the very end of the hall. I pushed the door open and found her lying in the bed wearing a hospital gown. There was a black belt with two large disks strapped across her belly. Her legs were spread and a tall, blonde nurse was checking her cervix. I walked across the room and set our bags down in a corner next to a long padded bench, undoubtedly made for the supportive partner to sleep on during long waits.

"You're about five centimeters dilated," the nurse said, removing her hand and pulling off the glove. "Dr. Fuschetto should be here soon to look over your charts and decide if you need Pitocin to speed up your labor. But in the mean time we can always look at some other things you can do to help with the pain. We have a tub you can soak in, exercise balls you can sit on—,"

"I want an epidural," Stephanie said firmly. "I've been in labor for over a day. I'm exhausted. I need sleep. And I need food."

"Sorry, but you can't have any food or drink until after you deliver," the nurse said kindly. "Just in case you need to go into surgery. But I can definitely arrange the epidural. The anesthesiologist just finished up a C-section so she can be in here in a few minutes to get you set up." The nurse left the room and Stephanie waved me over to her bed.

"You need to go down to the cafeteria and get me something once I have the epidural," she whispered. "I probably won't be so nauseous once the pain is under control."

I shook my head and squeezed her hand. "Sorry, babe. Not going to happen."

Stephanie let out a disgusted sigh. "Why not? I don't think I'm going to need surgery. Besides, I don't want a four-course meal. Just a candy bar or a bag of chips. I need something. You're supposed to be supporting me here. I'm having your baby. Remember our vows? In sickness and in health and all that?"

"Yes, and to make sure you stay healthy I'm going to listen to the doctor and not give into your begging. I've followed my vows."

Further bitching on Stephanie's end was interrupted by another contraction along with the entrance of the anesthesiologist. She fell asleep half an hour later once her epidural had kicked in and she found herself nearly numb from the waist down. I called each set of parents to give them an update and to ask my mother to come stay with Julie until Stephanie came home. I called the office to let them know I would be out the rest of the week and to refer to Tank if they had problems. And then I stretched out on the padded bench and fell asleep.

I woke up when the doctor entered the room at eight-fifteen. The doctor and a nurse looked over the readouts from the machine next to the bed which was attached to the bands on Stephanie's belly. The nurse had explained that the fetal monitor was tracking both the baby's heart rate and the intensity of Stephanie's contractions. The doctor gently touched Stephanie's shoulder to wake her before checking her cervix.

"Your labor isn't progressing as quickly as I would like," Dr. Fuschetto told Stephanie. "I'm going to manually break your amniotic sac to see if that will help your labor progress. If we don't see any further dilation within the next couple of hours, I'll have a Pitocin drip started. You've been in labor for quite a while. The baby seems to be doing just fine, but there is always a risk that she can go into distress the longer your labor goes on. If you aren't fully dilated by the time I come in for my evening rounds at five, I'll need to do a C-section."

"No,' Stephanie groaned. "I don't want a C-section."

"Let's not worry about that just yet," Dr. Fuschetto replied kindly. "We have a couple of things to try first. We'll give them some time to work."

The nurse walked into the room carrying a long, thin package. The doctor accepted it and laid it on the end of the bed without opening it. The nurse helped Stephanie shift down on the bed and instructed her to pull her numb legs up to her chest. The doctor opened the package, which turned out to look something like one of the plastic crochet needles that my Grandma Bella favored for her handiwork except this was about twice as long as the ones I had watched her use while growing up. I thought Stephanie was going to faint.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "You aren't going to put that thing inside me, are you?"

"It's going to be just fine," the doctor said. I was about to go sit on the side of the bed when another nurse walked in to change out the bag of IV fluids that was keeping Stephanie hydrated. I could tell Stephanie was terrified of the idea of having an object entered into an intimate part of her body. I had a clear view of the doctor's work and felt myself break into a sweat as I watched the plastic rod being entered into one of my favorite parts of her body. I felt nauseous and it took every ounce of restrain I possessed not to show my discomfort. I was suddenly having a flashback to my time in Somalia, when I had been subjected to torture that had included having foreign objects rammed into my body. I took a cleansing breath, reminded myself that this was nothing like what I had experienced, and refocused as the nurses helped clean up the now-wet towels that had been placed under Stephanie's hips. My wife was looking much more relaxed now that the procedure was over. I took a minute to be sure that I had myself together before standing up to go over to her.

"That wasn't so bad," Stephanie said as the doctor and nurses left the room. "It was more terrifying to watch."

I didn't need her to tell me that.

I spent the next few hours alternately sleeping and getting ice chips for Stephanie. The nurse had come in to check on Stephanie at ten and had announced that Stephanie would require the Pitocin drip to progress her labor. My mother had arrived in Trenton around eleven and stopped by the hospital. Stephanie had been working on her laptop so I had walked down to the main entrance of the hospital to give my mother the house key along with the alarm code. She planned to go to the house and get herself settled, asking me to let her know when the baby was born. Being a nurse, she knew how pointless it was to sit in the lobby all day waiting for a baby to born, especially when it would be another hour or two after the birth before anyone else would be able to visit. When I arrived back at the room, I found Stephanie staring at her computer screen looking slightly terrified. I walked up next to the bed to see what was bothering her.

"Why are you watching YouTube videos of women giving birth?" I asked.

"I needed to prepare myself for it," she said. "I feel kind of sick."

I reached over and closed out the screen and shut the computer. "Then stop watching. You'll be fine."

Stephanie grabbed my hand and I could feel that her palm was sweaty. "You should wait in the lobby when I have the baby," she said seriously.

I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because you are never going to want to have sex with me again if you have to see me go through that," she replied and there were tears in her eyes. "I love having sex with you. I don't want it ruined because you had to see a baby come out of me."

I sat down on the bed and wrapped an arm around her. "Don't worry, babe. That's never going to be a problem," I told her, doing my best not to laugh. I hid a small smile in her hair as I placed a kiss on her head.

"You can't know that," she said. "Did you see that video? Things were bleeding and tearing and—," Stephanie gagged as she tried to finish the thought. "And you are never going to want to visit that ever again—quit laughing at me!"

I couldn't help it. I had managed not to make a noise but had not been able to suppress the shaking as I laughed.

"I promise you that I will always want to have sex with you," I told her. "Even when I'm old and impotent and have probably forgotten your name, I'm still going to be trying to get in your pants. Besides, I'd love to see the army you would have to employ to drag me out of here."

Stephanie let out a tearful laugh. "I'm nervous. Not just about the childbirth thing, but about the fact that I'm going to be a mother soon. I'm worried I won't know what to do, or that I'll be terrible at this."

"I don't really know what I'm doing either, so at least we can be ignorant together," I said.

Stephanie worked on distracting herself from her anxiety by watching _Dog the Bounty Hunter_ reruns on television while I fielded calls from her mother and Julie, who had called me during her lunch hour to check on Stephanie.

"Haven't you had enough of bond enforcement to last a lifetime?" I asked.

"Not in Hawaii," she said. "Well, not really. I mean, we were there watching that guy, but we didn't actually get to detain him. You were too busy keeping me on my back."

I smiled at the memory. "That was a good time. It would have been even better if Morelli hadn't shown up. We should go back there someday."

"Maybe for our fifth wedding anniversary," Stephanie suggested. "Maybe my mother could keep the baby. Or we could take her and Julie with us and get them their own place to stay."

By three that afternoon, Stephanie began showing increasing discomfort. When the nurse came in to check on her, she told her about the feeling.

"We like to hear women say they are feeling pressure," the nurse said. "That's usually a good sign."

The nurse announced a few seconds later that Stephanie was now fully dilated and the two women high-fived. The nurse left to page the doctor and would return in a few minutes to have Stephanie start pushing. Dr. Fuschetto's office was across the street from the hospital and I knew she could be there within a few minutes.

I sat down on the bed next to Stephanie who was looking more nervous than I had ever seen her. A different nurse came into the room pushing a cart with a clear plastic container on top of a wooden cabinet with several drawers.

"I'm one of the baby nurses," she said as she parked the cart on the far side of the room. She began opening cabinet doors and pushing back partitions revealing more lights, a scale on which to weigh the baby, and other medical equipment. "I'll be here to take care of the baby once she is born until you move to postpartum. I will also help you feed your baby for the first time. Are you planning to breastfeed?"

Stephanie nodded.

Dr. Fuschetto walked in a few minutes later followed by the nurse. The doctor had a black bag with her and disappeared into the bathroom. The nurse came over to the bed.

"Okay, we are going to get started with the pushing while Dr. Fuschetto gets changed into her scrubs," the nurse said. She sat down on the other side of the bed from me and placed her hand under Stephanie's knee. "I'm going to need you to help brace her leg behind the knee like this," she said to me. "You will push from this position until the baby's head is about to be born. Then you'll move down to the end of the bed and use the stirrups for the last part of the delivery."

I did as I was told, holding Stephanie's leg with my right hand while she squeezed my left hand. I could tell she was in pain despite the epidural. A sweat began to break on her forehead as she pushed, she cheeks flushing with the effort. The doctor came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, dressed in dark blue scrubs and a matching surgical cap, hands help up to avoid contamination. The baby nurse helped her into gloves and both women stood back at the foot of the bed while Stephanie continued to push.

"Why isn't anything happening yet?" Stephanie said after she had been pushing forty-five minutes.

"It can take longer to deliver when you've had an epidural," the nurse said. "You can't feel what's going on. But don't worry, you're getting there. I'm starting to see a couple of strands of hair peek out with each push."

After another fifteen minutes of pushing, the doctor was assisted into a surgical gown by the other nurse.

"Okay, Stephanie, it's time to move down the bed," she said. "I can see the top of the baby's head."

The nurse and I helped Stephanie move down the bed a little and the nurse made some adjustments that made stirrups appears along with pushing the footboard down out of the way.

After three more pushes, I could see the baby's head start to emerge.

"Great job, Stephanie. Keep pushing," the doctor said.

I found it hard to tear my gaze away from what was happening. I had delivered a couple of babies during my time in the Army so I was familiar with what was happening, but watching it all happen with my own wife and child was surreal. I could feel my pulse pick up as the baby's head fully emerged. She had a full head of dark hair and as she turned sideways to face me, I could tell that she looked like me.

"You're almost there," the nurse said happily. "Her head is out."

With three more exhausted pushes, Eva Elizabeth Manoso came fully into the world. She was placed on Stephanie's abdomen on top of a towel. Her dark eyes were wide and slightly panicked, the shock of being born evident on her tiny face. Stephanie started to cry as she reached down to touch the baby.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Hi Eva. Oh my God, she's here."

I kissed Stephanie's forehead and took a second to collect myself as my vision started to blur.

"I'm proud of you, babe," I said. I squeezed her hand and looked down at our tiny daughter, who was now starting to cry. I was handed scissors to cut the umbilical cord that still connected her to Stephanie and then she was taken away by the baby nurse to be assessed. The next hour passed by in a blur as the doctor finished up with Stephanie and the nurse handed me the baby to hold for the first time. She was wrapped in a white hospital blanket with a pink hat on her head.

"She weighed six pounds, four ounces, and she's twenty inches long," the nurse said happily. "She's absolutely perfect. Congratulations."

"She only weighed a little over six pounds?" Stephanie said, looking anguished. "But I gained about fifty pounds while I was pregnant. What was the rest of it?"

"Some of it was the extra weight of your uterus and the amniotic fluid," the doctor said.

"So the rest of the weight is just because I ate like a pig?"

"It isn't uncommon for first time mothers to gain more weight than is recommended," Dr. Fuschetto said kindly. "The whole 'eating for two' belief can be difficult to understand the first time around."

"You should be a diplomat," I murmured to her as she came over to look at the baby. She chuckled.

"I get the question a lot," she said quietly. "I've learned how to respond in a way that doesn't make a woman who just gave birth feel terrible about herself."

The baby was taken from me and given to Stephanie to feed for the first time. The doctor headed back to her office to finish her appointments and promised to check in later during her rounds. I made the obligatory phone calls to our family members to give them the news. Julie was on her way back from school and said she would be to the hospital in about five minutes. She could ride home with my mother later on. Stephanie had just finished feeding the baby when there was a knock on the door and Julie walked in. She was in her school uniform and carrying her backpack. The nurse looked to me, ready to throw the teenager out if I requested it.

"This is my daughter, Julie," I said.

"Wow, what a big age difference," the nurse said as she let Julie pass. Julie threw her backpack down on the bench and walked over to see Stephanie and the baby.

"She's so cute," Julie said, accepting the baby from Stephanie. She walked over and sat down next to her backpack as she stared down at her new sister.

"Hi, Eva," Julie said quietly, reaching through the blankets to hold one of the baby's tiny hands. I watched as tears started to fall down her cheeks and she began wiping them away.

"I don't know why I'm crying," she said, sniffling as more tears started to fall. I sat down next to her and put an arm around her.

"You've had a lot happen recently" I said quietly. "You've experienced the full circle of life in your immediate family in three weeks' time. It's a little overwhelming."

She nodded and continued to stare at the baby, who was now comatose after her first meal.

"We have a really good dad," she told Eva. "You'll see."

Our parents and Julie kept us company once Stephanie was moved to the postpartum area. They all took turns holding her, commenting on the ways she resembled themselves or their respective children. Pictures were taken of everyone holding her, including what my mother dubbed our _first family photo_. Stephanie held Eva while Julie and I sat on either side of her. As the relief of the epidural began to wear off and the pain of what her body had been through began to set in, everyone quietly left. Stephanie fed the baby once more and I took her so that she could get some sleep. I changed the baby's diaper and attempted to rewrap the blanket the way the nurses did it, but failed. I took her over to the rocking chair in the corner and held her. She hadn't gone to sleep after eating like the last time, but was wide awake and taking me in. My mother—ever the nurse—had reminded us that any smiles Eva gave us were reflexive and that her vision wasn't very good at this point so she would rely more on our voices and scent to recognize us unless we were holding her close.

I stared at her face, seeing myself in the shapes of her eyes and mouth, but she had Stephanie's nose. I rubbed her cheek, which elicited a smile. _It's a reflex_ , I heard my mother's voice say in my head. I couldn't help but smirk at the memory of how excited Helen had been when Eva had smiled at her and how quickly her expression had changed as my mother had burst her delight that the baby had smiled because she liked her.

Eva started to fuss, so I patted her on the back and began to rock in the chair. "Shh, let's not wake your mommy up," I said quietly. I moved her up on my chest so that she was snuggled up under my chin and continued patting her back. I wrapped the blanket more tightly around her and she eventually settled down and fell asleep. I breathed in the scent of my new daughter—who smelled vaguely of the soap used in her first bath—while I stared over at my sleeping wife. Even in my happiness at home with Stephanie, the last few months had been stressful with the emotion of the first miscarriage, the initial stress of this pregnancy, Julie moving in with us, moving to a new home, and Ron's death. The sense of peace and happiness I was currently enjoying was a welcome feeling. I knew I would have other things to stress me as time went on, but for now I was going to stay in the moment and enjoy what I had.


	14. Epilogue

" _ **She scares the hell out of me and calms my soul at the same time. Maybe that's what love is—a total contradiction that somewhat balances." ~ Tammara Webber**_

 _6 months later…._

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

I raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Stephanie. It was only nine in the morning, so something serious must have happened to have her throwing that word around. I was driving us across town to a meeting with a new client and we had been in the middle of a discussion about the account when she had gotten a call on her cell phone.

"What do I do?" she asked the person on the phone, her voice rising an octave. She listened to the person on the phone and her left knee began to bounce.

She listened for another minute before thanking the caller and hanging up. She looked like she might be sick or pass out.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"My birth control pills are part of a lot that is ineffective. They are having to call everyone to let them know so that they can get new pills. But they recommend taking a pregnancy test first to be sure you aren't pregnant," she said, and she leaned forward in her seat. She was breathing hard.

"We need to stop and get a pregnancy test," she said after a few seconds. "There's a pharmacy. Stop right now!"

I pulled into the parking lot and she jumped out of the car before I could say anything. I figured it was unlikely that she was pregnant, but understood her concern. We had made the decision last month that we didn't want to have any more children. We were both nearing forty and figured it would only be harder as we got older to go through the up-all-night-with-a-crying-baby gig. We had barely made it through the first three months of Eva's life with our sanity intact. Then just as she was starting to get more settled and sleep better at night, she began teething. We were currently in Round Two of Parenting Hell. Other than her constant fussiness, Eva was wonderful. But to be on the safe side, I had a vasectomy scheduled for next week.

I called her cell phone after she had been in the store ten minutes but there was no answer. She came out to the car a couple of minutes later.

"I went to the bathroom here so I could take the test, but I haven't seen the results yet," she said, pulling a wad of paper towel out of her purse. She unwrapped the test stick and stared at the readout screen. I leaned over to see what it said.

 _Pregnant._

I could feel Stephanie start to shake and I put a hand on her leg.

"It'll be okay, babe," I reassured her, even if I wasn't feeling convinced of that myself. "We'll get through this."

"But I can't be pregnant. I just had Eva six months ago."

We sat quietly and absorbed the shock for a few minutes. Another baby being on the way wasn't exciting news for us. We had been about ninety percent sure after Eva was born that we didn't want any more children and the daily grind of parenthood had pushed that up to one hundred percent. We loved our child and were glad to have her, but we recognized our limits as people and parents.

"I don't know if I can go through with it," Stephanie said quietly. "I really don't."

I was surprised to hear her talk like that and what the implications meant. I didn't want to think too hard on the whole pregnancy subject at the moment because we were due to go into a meeting, but I reached over and took hold of her hand.

"I will support whatever decision you make, babe," I said. "I'm not the one who has to be pregnant and give birth. But I think if you decide to have it, we will be fine. And I'm still going to have the vasectomy done next week."

She nodded absentmindedly. "I don't think I can go into that meeting. I can't focus. Can you do it without me? I can just sit in the car."

Stephanie waited in the car while I went inside to conduct the negotiations for services being rendered to a retail chain with several branches in the area. I managed to stay pretty focused as I outlined services, but found my thoughts occasionally wandering back to the news that there was another baby on the way. Would Stephanie actually have it, or would she terminate? Could she actually do that? It was one thing to think about it, but another to actually do it. I had meant it when I told her that it was her choice whether or not to have the baby and I would be fine with either result. But I knew my wife and I had a hard time imagining her being able to go through with an abortion.

I returned to the car ninety minutes later and found her reclined in the seat. Her eyes were red from crying. She repositioned the seat once I climbed in and we headed back towards the office.

"Do you really think we could handle having another child?" she asked as we turned onto Broad street.

"I do. We've had to overcome much bigger obstacles than this in our time together. And even though Eva's fussiness has been hard to handle, it won't last forever. And from what I have heard from pretty much everyone I know who has multiple children, they are all different as babies. This baby might be really good. If not, then at least we know what to expect."

When we arrived at Rangeman, we found Ella and Eva visiting with Louis on the fifth floor. After Eva's birth, Ella had approached us with a proposal. She had known we were on the search for a nanny, but weren't finding anyone we liked. She had put herself forward as a potential nanny and offered her daughter Claire as a replacement cook for Rangeman. Claire was recently divorced and looking to move back to Trenton. Stephanie and I had taken her up on the offer at once.

"There's mommy and daddy," Ella told Eva, who kicked her legs excitedly as we approached. Stephanie burst into tears, which made Eva start to cry as well. I took the baby from Ella and rubbed Stephanie on the back.

"What's wrong?" Ella asked, concerned.

"My birth control pills—were part of a— bad batch and— I'm pregnant again," Stephanie said through sobs. Ella pulled Stephanie into a motherly embrace.

"It's okay, honey," she said soothingly. "You'll be just fine. They'll be about fifteen months apart or so. That's not terrible. You might find it works out better. They'll be closer and do things together. Our oldest two children are barely eleven months apart."

Stephanie pulled back from Ella, the shock interrupting her sobs. "What?! How?"

Ella laughed. "I didn't listen to my doctor about waiting six weeks after delivery, and I believed the old wives' tale that you couldn't get pregnant while breastfeeding."

Stephanie continued to stare at Ella in open-mouthed shock before turning on Louis and smacking him on the arm. "What the hell is wrong with you, Louis? Why couldn't you leave that poor woman alone?"

Louis grinned unashamedly. "I didn't exactly have to beg her, if memory serves me correctly."

Stephanie gave a disgusted snort and walked into the control room. I gave Eva a kiss on the head and handed her back Ella. "We just found about two hours ago, so she's still in shock."

Ella patted my arm. "She'll come around. Don't worry."

I could see Stephanie sitting at her desk in her office from across the control room. I stopped to talk to a couple of different people as I made my way to my own office. I had just taken a seat at my desk when Jeanne Ellen walked in. She had been working at Rangeman since June and it had gone mostly well. There had been the occasional inappropriate comment throw in my direction, but it hadn't been in front of anyone else so I had managed to ignore them. Once Stephanie had returned to the office, Jeanne Ellen had made subtle comments about field work and being the only woman out on patrols. Stephanie had resisted the urge to yell at her, but I suspected that restraint would come to an end now that she was pregnant again.

"What's wrong with Stephanie?" Jeanne Ellen asked, taking the seat across from my desk.

"It's none of your business."

"I saw Ella here with the baby. I thought maybe Stephanie was feeling guilty for not being a stay-at-home mother," Jeanne Ellen crooned. "I can see why you pulled her from the field. Clearly she's not fit to do any _real_ work."

I had no sooner opened my mouth to defend Stephanie when I realized that Stephanie was standing behind Jeanne Ellen and had heard everything. Stephanie grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up to standing, taking Jeanne Ellen by surprise. Stephanie took the opportunity to punch Jeanne Ellen in the face and stomp on her foot. Jeanne Ellen cried out in pain as Stephanie kept a grip on her hair.

"I'm more than fit to do your job," Stephanie spat at her. "And if you hit on my husband one more time, I'm going to kick you until you're dead." With that final threat, she kicked Jeanne Ellen in the knee and released her, stomping off to her own office. Over Jeanne Ellen's shoulder I could see Hal standing in the control room, staring at the scene with a shocked expression on his face. Lester was next to him wearing a shit-eating grin.

"Get back to work Jeanne Ellen," I said calmly, as though nothing more than a mild verbal sparring had occurred. Jeanne Ellen looked angry and shocked, but said nothing as she reached for a tissue on my desk to help stem the blood pouring from her nose. She stalked off in the opposite direction of Stephanie's office.

I gave Stephanie a few minutes to pull herself together before I went into her office. She was typing angrily on her computer, her expression stony.

"When Morelli and I punched each other in Hawaii, you hated it. I can't understand why. I really liked that," I told her. She flipped me off without looking away from her screen.

"I know all about the sexual innuendos she throws in your direction," she replied. "I haven't said anything because I figured you could take care of her yourself. But then she brought me into it, and I'm not in the mood for someone talking shit about me today."

"I was fully prepared to defend you, but you took care of that all by yourself. I didn't want to stop you," I said. "I would have only intervened if Jeanne Ellen had tried to hurt you."

I got a text message from Julie about an hour after the altercation.

 _ **Did Stephanie really punch Jeanne Ellen in the face? Please tell me you recorded that.**_

Stephanie and Julie had been a united front in their dislike of Jeanne Ellen. Julie had overheard one of the less subtle comments not long after Jeanne Ellen had started work and had subsequently put a laxative in the coffee Jeanne Ellen always took home with her at the end of the work day. She'd had to call in sick the following day, which was good for Julie. She and I had left for Florida the day after that to finalize her adoption and her name change. She was now Julie Catherine Martine-Manoso.

 _ **I didn't record it, but it was satisfying to watch.**_ I replied.

Stephanie and I returned home that evening to find Julie playing with Eva in the living room and Ella putting the finishing touches on dinner. We had insisted that when Ella became the nanny that she not take on housekeeping roles. We didn't want to take advantage of her, even though her meals were far better than anything Stephanie or I usually prepared.

"I know you two don't normally want me to cook, but I thought you could use it after the news you got today" she said as she reached for her bag. "It just needs to cook for a few more minutes."

"Thanks, Ella," I said. Julie carried Eva into the dining room and strapped her into the high chair.

"What news?" Julie asked. Ella grimaced and mouthed _sorry._

Stephanie let out a sigh. "I'm pregnant again."

Julie's eyes grew wide. "Are you serious? How did that happen? Wait, don't tell me. I know _how_ it happened. I just meant—,"

"My birth control pills were duds," Stephanie said. "I think I'm going to find out where they were manufactured and go pay a visit to the facility. I need to beat someone up for all the pain I'm going to have to go through having this baby."

Julie laughed. "Can I come with you? I missed out on seeing you punch Jeanne Ellen. I can only imagine what you'll do to the person who screwed up your birth control."

Eva cooed and banged on the tray on her highchair as though indicating her support in the cause.

I was pretty sure the three women in my life were all crazy. And I loved it.


End file.
